
Or 

fed 6 







HYGIENE 



FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



BY 

A. P. KNIGHT, M. A., M. D. 

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY 
QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO 




NEW YORK 
CHARLES E. MERRILL CO, 

44-60 East Twenty-tijirp Street 



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Copyright, 1909 



CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 



a. 4 248091 
SEP 27 1909 



PREFACE 

The sources from which I have drawn material in 
writing this book have been very various. The standard 
physiologies of Howell, Ott, Schaffer, Stewart, Hall, 
Halliburton, and Hough & Sedgwick have been freely 
consulted. But on special topics I have made use of 
original monographs, or reports. 

I am especially indebted to Sir Michael Foster's chap- 
ter on Sunlight; Professor F. W. Kelsey's article on The 
Villas of Boscoreale in the Chautauquan for May, 1906; 
Professor C. F. Hodge's article in The Physiological As- 
pects of the Liquor Problem; Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. 
Sturge's Alcohol and the Human Body; Sedgwick's Prin- 
ciples of Sanitary Science and Public Health; J. W. Seaver's 
Effects of Nicotine; Reports of the Massachusetts' State 
Board of Health, 1888 to 1895; Milk and its Relation to 
the Public Health; being bulletin 41, Public Health and 
Marine Hospital Service, Washington, D. C, 1908; Abbott, 
A. C, The Hygiene of Transmissible Disease; and The Life 
of Pasteur, by Rene Vallery-Radot. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. Sunlight and Plants . 
II. Sunlight and Animals 

III. Fresh Air 

IV. Ventilation 
V. Impurities in Air 

VI. Tobacco Smoke in Air 
VII. Care of the Hair 
VIII. Care of the Skin and Nails 
IX. Bathing 
X. Care of the Teeth 
XI. Care of the Ears 
XII. Care of the Eyes 

XIII. The Work of the Blood 

XIV. Tobacco and the Blood 
XV. Food .... 

XVI. What Milk Contains 

XVII. Selection and Digestion of Foor 

XVIII. A Roman Wine Farm . 

XIX. Narcotics 

XX. How Our Foods Spoil 

XXI. Sleeping 

XXII. Exercise .... 

XXIII. Ax Enfectious Disease 

XXIV. Microbes and Disease 

5 



PAGE 

7 

15 

21 

27 

35 

44 

49 

56 

63 

71 

78 

85 

93 

101 

107 

115 

121 

127 

134 

138 

143 

149 

155 

160 



6 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXV. Consumption 165 

XXVI. Alcohol and Animals . > . 171 

XXVII. The Alcohol Habit .... 176 

XXVIII. Clothing ...... 183 

XXIX. Cleanliness and Pure Water . . 190 

XXX. Pure Milk . . .... 201 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



CHAPTER I 

SUNLIGHT AND PLANTS 

Come with me to a pine grove * such as 
may be seen on many a farm, and let us study 
the effects of sunlight upon the branches of the 
trees. 

First, walk through the clump and notice 
those trees on which the living branches are 
close to the ground, and those on which the 
living branches are high up on the trunk. 
Notice also how far apart the trees stand from 
each other, and whether there are many or few 
branches according as the trees are near to- 
gether or far apart. 

If you are lucky in your choice of a grove, 
you will discover that when the trees are close 

gether the only thriving branches are high up 

♦While clumps of pine show the facts best, yet any clump of 
>vill <lo for this study. 

7 



8 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 1 . — Clump of old pines, lower branches gone. 

on the trunk, and that many dead ones are 
below, all the way down. When the trees are 
young and far apart, the living branches are 
more numerous and grow out from the trunk 
all round. The branches extend from the top 
right down to the ground, and there are very 
few, if any, dead branches on such trees. 

Notice the branching of the trees in figure 1. 
The central trees are almost without living 
limbs, excepting near the top; whereas nearly 



SUNLIGHT AND PLANTS 




s5 



Figure 2. — Clump of young pines, branched to the ground. 



all the trees around the outside of the plot 
have living branches down almost to the ground, 
or, at least, much lower down than in the case 
of the central trees. What do you suppose 
has made the difference in the branching? 

By way of contrast, look at this other picture 
of a smaller clump of pines — figure 2. In this 
group the pines are much younger and the 
full effect of the crowding of one tree upon the 
other has not yet become plain. 



10 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

You see that every tree is encircled with 
green branches from top to bottom. There 
are no tall trunks such as you see in figure 1, 
and such as can be seen in every pine forest. 
Almost every branch which grew out from each 
stem has remained alive. Nature has done no 
pruning on these trees as yet. 

But if you could wait for forty or fifty years 
and then examine this clump again, you would 
see that the same changes had taken place in it 
as in the older one. Limbs which had been 
crowded by trees near at hand would all be 
dead or dying. Trunks which had stretched 
upward above the others would all be green 
at the top, and would bear, on their lengthened 
sides, only the remains of former branches. 

In short, the trees in figure 2 will in time come 
to resemble almost exactly those in figure 1. 

Now look at figure 3. On each side of the 
gate stand pines which are half-way in age 
between those in figure 1 and those in figure 2. 

Here the living branches are found over- 
arching the driveway. The dead branches are 
found adjoining the neighboring trees. For 
some reason or other, the driveway has been 



SUNLIGHT AND PLANTS 



11 




Figure 3. — Gate: Entrance to Grounds. 

the means of keeping some branches alive; 
while, for some equally mysterious reason, 
the neighboring trees, closely crowding upon 
the pines, have lopped off many of their 
branches. 

This is the way in which Mother Nature 
prunes the pine trees in <the forest, and give 



12 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

us the tall tapering trunks from which long 
straight beams of timber are made. 

What has caused these differences in branch- 
ing? Has sunshine or shade, heat or cold, rain 
or soil, air or food made the difference? The 
soil is the same under every tree in each of 
these clumps. The soil, therefore, cannot be the 
cause. Air encircles every pine and passes 
through amongst them. Air, therefore, cannot 
have lopped off most of the branches on some 
trees, while it has left them on others. There 
remains only the sunlight and shade as the 
cause of the difference. And this is the cause. 
When branches and leaves of evergreen trees 
are in the sunlight, they flourish; when they 
are in the shade they sicken and die. 

So important is the influence of light on 
nearly all green plants, that the leaves are 
arranged on every growing stem so as to catch 
the greatest possible amount of light. Those 
that do not get a fair share sicken and die. 
For this reason you will find the upper leaves of 
the dandelion green and growing, while its under 
and shaded ones are brown and dying. Then, 
too, the dandelion by its shade kills some of the 



SUNLIGHT AND TLAXTS 13 

grass underneath it, and for the same reason, 
overarching trees kill even portions of a hedge- 
row. 

Then again you must have noticed another 
way in which sunlight affects plants. Did you 
ever pick up a board on a grass plot in summer 
and find that the grass under it was almost 
white? In this case, there could be no doubt 
as to. the cause of the whiteness; because the 
bleached spot was exactly the size and shape 
of the board. Moreover, when the board was 
removed, the grass again became green in the 
course of a few r days or a week. If the board 
were allowed to remain, the grass would, in the 
end, die. 

If you look at a leaf under a microscope you 
will see why its color is green, but not all of it 
is green. The leaf seems to be made up of little 
bladders which you can see through. In the 
inside of each of the little bladders or sacs, are 
many small green balls, which in some plants 
move round and round in a clear liquid like 
water. It is these balls that give the greeo 
color to the leaf. 

Now these green balls have a most important 



14 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

work to do for the plant. Each one is a kind 
of machine for making starch and sugar, and 
for converting the food of the plant into the 
woody stuffs — the root, stem and leaf — of the 
plant. These balls will not form without sun- 
light, and this is why grass becomes pale in 
color when kept from the light. 

What lessons on health these plants could 
teach us, if we only knew enough to profit by 
them! Light helps us to make good blood, 
and good blood helps us to make healthy 
muscle and nerve; whereas shade and darkness 
will sooner or later make us pale and sickly. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What difference is there in the branching of an old tree and 
that of a young one of the same kind? How do you account for 
this difference? 

2. Name some plants, or shrubs, that grow best in the shade of 
trees. Name some that will grow only in sunshine. 

3. Where have you seen plants growing that are grayish or 
white in color? Do such plants grow on soil like most other 
plants, or do they grow on rotten wood. Do they grow in shade 
or in sunlight? 

4. What is the cause of the green color of the leaves of most of 
our trees and shrubs? What is the use of the little green balls 
in the inside of the little bladders or sacs which make up green 
leaves? 

5. Why do we cover up celery in sand? 



SUNLIGHT AND ANIMALS 15 



CHAPTER II 

SUNLIGHT AND ANIMALS 

Does light affect animals in the same way as 
it does plants? It would seem so. Even the 
shadow cast by an animal's own body is enough 
to affect the color of its under surface. This 
is seen in the fact that the hair and skin on 
the under surface of birds, snakes, frogs, toads, 
fish, and many other animals, is lighter in color 
than that on the sides or the back. 

Does light affect human life in this way? If 
not, has it any effect? Look around you and see 
whether the faces of your friends or of strangers 
whom you may meet in towns and cities, are all 
equally ruddy or equally pale. Even a very 
brief look will satisfy you that they are not. 

Some are ruddy, some are pale. Why the 
difference? Surely it must be due in part to the 
fact that some live much in the shade, and, like 
the grass under the board, have grown pale in 
the shade of the houses, shops, or factories in 
which they pass so much of the day. It would 
in from all those facts that light is as neces- 



16 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



r* 














Figure 4. — Solitary Tree, branched regularly all around, because all 
parts of it have been equally exposed to sunlight, shade and wind. 

sary for the health of human beings as it is for 
the health of plants. 

If you doubt this, consider some other facts. 
You find more pale people in crowded cities 
than in the country. People who live much in 
the open get their faces and hands tanned by the 
sun. What does tanning the skin mean? It 
means that the light, in striking on the skin, 
darkens it. As everyone knows, the skin is 
always paler in color under the clothing than 
it is where the sun shines on it. In fact, it 
would seem as if the color of the human skin 



. 



SUNLIGHT AND ANIMALS 17 

varies with the strength of the sun's rays. 
People who live in hot climates have darker 
skins than those who live farther north, where 
the sun's rays are not so strong. 

But the tanning of the skin is only part of the 
effect w^hich sunlight has on us. The light 
passes into the flesh, and affects the blood, and 
through the blood it affects every organ of the 
body. 

Prisoners in dungeons always grow pale and 
weak. Of course, part of the cause of this is 
bad air and lack of exercise; but much of it 
is due to lack of light. Even if you lived in 
a large room and had plenty of fresh air and 
food, you would still grow pale and sickly if 
the room had not plenty of light. Just as green 
plants must have plenty of sunshine in order 
to convert their food into branches, leaves and 
fruit, so you also must live in the light to con- 
vert your food into red blood, ruddy cheeks, 
and healthy flesh. 

Perhaps some of you may have read about 
men, women, and children who have lived for 
years, down in mines, and who never come out 
into the sunlight excepting for an occasional 



18 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

holiday. While a few people may live on in this 
way for years and may seem to be in fairly good 
health, yet such a mode of life is very unnatural 
and can only result in the growth of a weakly 
and short-lived race. 

Some people have the notion that white 
cheeks in girls are more genteel than brown 
ones, and so girls are kept in the house much 
of the time or are made to wear gloves and 
veils when out in the sun. This is very wrong. 
But, of course, too much sunlight in very hot 
weather is not good for a person any more than 
too much salt or too much food. 

Too much heat in summer may cause us to 
get heatstroke, or sunstroke as it is often called ; 
but, apart from meeting with an accident like 
heatstroke in the summer, there is not much 
danger of sunlight doing us any harm. Heat- 
stroke, indeed, often comes upon people who are 
not exposed to the sun's rays at all. Not only 
does moderate sunlight do us no harm; it is 
something which we cannot do without, because 
it is needed for growing the little red discs 
which give redness to the blood and redness to 
the skin and flesh, 



SUNLIGHT AND ANIMALS 19 

There is one other important thing about 
direct sunlight which you should bear in mind. 
In warm weather it kills the invisible seeds of 
disease which you will read about further on. 
As a rule, disease germs live and flourish in 
darkness or in shade. Knowing this, you will 
see how necessary it is that sunlight should, if 
possible, be let into every corner of our dwelling 
houses. The windows in cellars should be large, 
as well as the windows in our living rooms, 
and neither of them should be screened all the 
time so as to keep out the sunlight. 

Into the living rooms and bedrooms, sunlight 
should be allowed to stream freely. The curtains 
and carpets will, of course, become faded, but 
that is a small matter compared with the 
health of a household. Heavy curtains and 
carpets harbor dust and disease germs, and are 
therefore unhealthful. Our living rooms w r ould 
be decidedly better without them, and in no case 
should their care be made an excuse for ex- 
cluding sunlight. 

Xot only should bedding be thoroughly aired 
even' day but it should be exposed to direct 
sunshine as well. Our houses should as far as 



20 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



possible face the south, and the windows should 
be large so as to admit plenty of sunlight. 
It has often been noted in recent years that 
many more deaths from consumption occur in 
shady rooms in tenement houses than in sunlit 
ones. Houses which are shaded by trees, and 
rooms which get no sunlight, are the ones which 
we should avoid if we go to live in a city. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What does tanning the skin mean? 

2. The red color of the blood is due to an immense number of 
little red discs which float in the liquid part of the blood. How 
can the number of these discs be decreased? How increased? 

3. How many windows are there in your schoolroom? Ask 
your teacher if they are large enough to let in all the sunlight that 
is necessary for health. Should the window blinds be kept down 
when the children are not in the school? Why not? 

4. If sunlight is a good thing for children, should window panes 
be frosted in a school or home? 

5. Why should bedding be put out in the sun every day? What 
is the effect of sunshine on disease germs? 



FRESH AIR 21 

CHAPTER in 

FRESH AIR 

Did you ever go into a house, a school, or a 
work-room, and find it stuffy? If you passed 
from one stuffy room to another you would, of 
course, not notice any difference; but if you 
passed from the fresh air and sunlight outside 
into a stuffy bedroom or school-house, you 
could hardly fail to notice the difference. You 
would soon say to yourself, "What an ill- 
smelling room!" And yet, stuffy rooms are 
exactly the rooms in which many people sleep 
at night and in which they work all day, be- 
cause they are careless or do not know any 
better. 

Some people have never learned that if they 
live in close rooms all day and sleep in stuffy 
bedrooms all night, they are starving their 
bodies. For we may starve our bodies in other 
ways than by not taking enough food. Our 
bodies need something besides what we eat and 
drink. They need something which we get from 
the air, and which we cannot get anywhere else. 



22 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

The need for this something in the air is 
very pressing. You can prove this yourselves 
by closing your mouths tightly and holding 
your nostrils firmly together. How long can 
you keep from breathing? Perhaps for a minute 
or two. Sooner or later, however, do what you 
will, you are forced to breathe again. The flesh 
and blood cry out for that part of the air which 
we call oxygen. 

If you went into a closet or a box, and closed 
it so that no air could pass into, or out of the 
box, you would learn, in another way, how 
strongly the blood and flesh crave oxygen. 
For a little while you would feel quite com- 
fortable, but, as soon as the oxygen in the box 
became scanty through your using it up in 
breathing, you would begin to pant. And if 
you did not open the box and let in some fresh 
air, you would soon die. 

How large a room, then, should we live in, 
in order not to suffer from lack of air? The 
answer to this question will depend upon a 
number of things. If no fresh air could get 
into it, we should die in a large room just the 
same as if we were in a box or small closet, only 



FRESH AIR 23 

we should live a much longer time. But if air 
is made to pass freely into and out of a room 
or a box, then we could live in either one until 
we died of hunger or thirst. What we must 
have is a constant supply of fresh air; and, if 
we have this, it does not matter much whether 
we live in a small room or a large one. 

Of course, if a number of people sleep in a 
small room or work in a small room, you can 
easily see that they would use up the oxygen 
of the air much more quickly than if there were 
only a few people present. The air in such a 
room would need to be changed often; for, if 
not, the health of those in it would suffer. 

At first you would notice very little change, 
if any. But in course of time it would be seen 
that overcrowding in even a large room makes 
the inmates pale and delicate. They would not 
have good rich blood, nor would they be able 
to digest their food properly; they would grow 
weak and be likely to catch some disease and die. 
So, overcrowding is bad for the health — over- 
crowding in bedrooms or overcrowding in school- 
rooms or churches or factories or workshops. 

There should be so much fresh air for every- 



24 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

one in a room that it would never be stuffy. 
If there are many people in a room each cannot 
get enough oxygen from the air, unless it is 
changed very often. 

You will see, then, that the answer to the 
question, "How large a room should we live 
in?" depends upon two things. It depends 
upon how many people are in the room and 
upon how often the air is changed. 

It may help you to understand how the air 
in a room may be changed, if you will perform 
the following experiment : 

Provide two lamp chimneys and a tightly 
covered tin box — one that has held tea or starch 
will do very well. Make a hole about an inch in 
diameter near one end of the cover and over this 
hole place one of the chimneys, sealing it down 
with wax. 

At the opposite side of the cover, punch a 
circle of small holes round a candle. Light the 
candle and bring the second chimney down 
over it. Fasten this chimney also to the box 
with wax, so that no air may pass into the box 
round the bottom of the chimney. Now watch 
what happens, 



FRESH AIR 



25 




If you have arranged the apparatus properly, 
fresh air will pass into the box by one chimney, 
and foul air from the candle 
will go out by the other. In 
other words, the box will be 
ventilated. A piece of smok- 
ing paper over one chimney 
will show the direction of the 
air currents. 

A small living room with 
a large family in it or a small 
schoolroom with many chil- 
dren in it, Should be Ventilated Figure 5.— Chimney over a 

burning candle on a box. 

in somewhat the same way. 

Changing the stuffy air in a room for pure air 
is called ventilating the room. You might sup- 
pose that it would be an easy matter to do this, 
but it is not. 

The chief thing is to draw fresh air into our 
houses and get the stuffy air out. How can we 
do this? In warm summer weather it is easily 
done. We have simply to keep our windows 
and doors open all the time; and, if we do, 
there will not be much trouble about getting 
plenty of oxygen for the blood. But in cold 



26 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

weather, it is a great deal harder to regulate. 
While we may feel the need of fresh air, we dis- 
like cold air, and therefore, in winter, we close 
up the chinks about the doors and windows 
in order to keep the cold air out. But even in 
winter, ventilation is easy, if we have plenty 
of fuel to burn. 

And now, a word or two about breathing. It 
is quite true that ordinary breathing is so nat- 
ural a thing that it requires no teaching and no 
practice. But correct breathing is another 
matter. Of course you know that we should 
always breathe through the nose. But many 
of you do not know why. After we have been 
sitting quiet for a long time, it is a good thing 
to take a few quick, long breaths. This rapid 
breathing draws more blood into the heart, 
and makes the heart drive the blood more 
quickly all over the body, especially to the 
brain. After boys and girls have been studying 
hard for, say, half-an-hour, some breathing 
exercises have a first-rate effect. They rest one 
set of muscles and bring another set into play. 
They freshen up the brain, brighten the mind, 
and make study easier. This is why your 



VENTILATION 27 

teacher every now and again stops lessons, lets 
in some fresh air, and spends some time in giv- 
ing you breathing exercises. 

QUESTIONS 

1. How can you tell that a room requires to be ventilated? 
What effect will stuffy air have upon people who breathe it? 

2. If a room has only one window, is one opening enough to 
ventilate the room, or should there be at least two openings? Why? 

3. How is the lamp chimney of a common coal-oil lamp ven- 
tilated? How is the same chimney ventilated, when it has a tightly 
fitting cork inserted in the bottom with a candle burning on it? 

4. What brought the current of air into the box through the 
lamp chimney? 



CHAPTER IV 

VENTILATION 

The ventilation of our homes and school- 
houses depends chiefly upon two things, namely, 
upon keeping the rooms clean and upon having 
enough fuel. 

For rooms are often musty and ill-smelling 
because they are not clean; and when they are 
not scrubbed and swept and dusted no amount 
of fresh air will make them smell sweet. But, 
if rooms are kept clean and there is plenty of 



28 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

fuel, there need be little trouble about ven- 
tilation. 

Some of you will want to know what coal and 
wood have to do with the ventilation of a room. 
Well, they have a great deal to do with it. If 
you have followed me in what I have been say- 
ing, you will see that in ventilating any room 
in winter, the stuffy air must be let out, and the 
fresh air drawn in from the outside. 

Often, however, this fresh air is very cold, 
and it must be warmed by a stove or furnace, 
otherwise people in the room will be very un- 
comfortable, and will probably catch cold and 
become ill. Now this warming of the fresh air 
costs money. It costs just the price of the wood 
or coal which must be burnt in order to heat the 
cold air and bring it up to the temperature 
of the living room; that is, about 67° F. as 
marked on your school thermometer. During 
cold or chilly weather ventilation costs a good 
deal of money; for the oftener you change the 
stuffy air for fresh, warmed air, the more money 
it costs to heat the house. 

The extra expense for fuel is one reason why 
the houses of many poor people are so badly 



VENTILATION 29 

ventilated. They close up every chink around 
doors and windows, they bank the house with 
earth, and take great pains "to keep the cold 
out," forgetting that they are also keeping the 
pure air out and the impure air in, and that this 
impure air is all the time becoming more and 
more unfit to breathe. 

To make matters worse, there may be a man 
in the house who smokes tobacco, and so the 
air is poisoned still more, for tobacco smoke is 
injurious especially to young children. Add 
to this the further fact, that the odor of burnt 
food is frequently spread throughout the living 
room, and you can easily understand that 
the air in such homes is as foul and ill-smell- 
ing as it can well be. No wonder the death 
rate is high among people who live in such 
homes. 

To show you how heavily disease and death 
press upon people who live in ill-ventilated or 
very small houses, or w T ho live crowded together 
in very big houses just the same as if they were 
in small houses, let me quote some figures from 
a paper by Dr. J. B. Russell, of Glasgow, Scot- 
land, on the subject of overcrowding: 



30 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



Size of house 


Number of 
people living 

in these 

houses 


Deaths Percentage ! 
per of 
year population 


Percental 

of 

deaths 


One room 


134,728 


3,636 


24.7 


27.0 


Two rooms .... 


243,691 


6,325 


44.7 


47.0 


Three rooms . . ♦ . 


86,956 


1,747 


16.0 


13.0 


Four rooms . . . 


32,742 


581 


6.1 


4.3 


Five rooms and upward 


38,647 


434 


7.1 


3.3 


Public Institutions . . 


6,531 


427 


1.4 


3.2 


Untraced 




289 




2.2 



Whole city population 543,295 13,439 100 100 

From this table you can easily see that the 
death rate is very high among people who live 
crowded together in homes of one or two rooms. 
Bad air is one of the causes of this high death 
rate. 

While overcrowding is not nearly so common 
in this country as in Great Britain, nevertheless 
there are many homes in America in which the 
ventilation is very bad. Many women among 
us pass much of the daytime in two rooms — 
the kitchen and the living room. 

Now, the air in these two rooms can be made 
fairly healthful by careful attention to ventila- 
tion. If the living room has a fireplace with 
a fire burning in it, as would be the case in 
winter, most of the stuffy air will pass up the 



VENTILATION 



31 




Figure G. — An open fireplace is a splendid means of ventilating 



chimney, and fresh air will be drawn in through 
the chinks between the windows and window 
frames, and between the doors and door frames. 
So the inmates will be kept warm and the room 
will be fairly well ventilated. 

How about the ventilation at night? With 
only one or two people sleeping in a small bed- 



32 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

room, even if there is a fireplace in it, the air 
in the room will be very stuffy before morning, 
and the inmates will awake feeling dull and 
tired, and perhaps cross and with a headache. 
To avoid these bad effects, thoughtful people 
always sleep with the windows of their bed- 
rooms open. If there are plenty of bedclothes, 
open windows can do no harm and the fresh 
air will do us a great deal of good. We shall 
wake up feeling bright, fresh, and rested. 

In a schoolroom, again, especially in all old 
school-houses, it often happens that no pains 
have been taken to plan the rooms so that they 
can be properly ventilated. In modern school 
buildings, ventilating appliances are used to 
pump fresh air into the rooms or to suck the 
bad air out. But, in old fashioned buildings, 
other means must be used. 

In all school-houses which are warmed with 
stoves, the window sashes should be arranged 
so that the upper one can be lowered from the 
top, and the lower one raised from the bottom. 
When the windows are arranged in this way, 
rooms can, with a little care, be fairly well ven- 
tilated. For most of the warm, stuffy air will 



VENTILATION 33 

pass out at the upper opening, and fresh air 
will come in at the bottom. The chief draw- 
back to this mode of ventilation is that the 
pupils who sit opposite to the windows will be 
in a draught, and a draught is not good for any- 
one, especially in winter. For this reason it is 
better to open windows upon the sheltered side 
of the building, not upon the windy side. 

A cold draught is air moving quickly and 
usually through a chink, striking on the body 
and cooling it. The colder the draught, the 
worse it is for you. If it strike your neck or 
uncovered head, it is likely to give you a cold, 
and it may perhaps make you very ill. 

Now this draught can be largely avoided by 
fixing a board at the bottom of the window in a 
slanting direction, so that the cold air which 
comes in is thrown upwards into the room and 
over the heads of the pupils. The board should 
be about six inches wide, and as long as the 
width of the window. It should be fixed in the 
manner indicated in the accompanying diagram. 

The teacher should never open the windows 
and allow a draught to strike anyone. If the 
upper sash cannot be lowered, he should stop 



34 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

Figure 7 Figure 7a 








Window sashes both closed. 



The upper sash lowered; 
the lower sash raised. 



A, Upper sash; B, Lower sash; C, Slanting board, arranged so that 
it can be adjusted. 



the lessons for a little, throw the door and win- 
dows wide open, and allow the children to move 
about in the room, so that no child will be sit- 
ting in a draught. This could not be safely 
done in very cold weather, for example, when 
your school thermometer marks 0° F. out- 
side. 

When the air has been made fresh and sweet, 
the doors and windows may be closed and the 
lessons begun again. This should be done about 
every half-hour. A little warm air will be lost 
and a little more fuel will be burnt, but the 
extra cost of ventilation will be repaid a 



IMPURITIES IX AIR 35 

hundred-fold in the better health of the pupils 
and the better work done by them. 

QUESTIONS 

1. How is the bad air let out and fresh air let into your school- 
room during school hours? 

2. When the weather is cold, open the door about an inch. Place 
a candle flame first at the top of the door, and then at the bottom. 
Can you now tell where fresh air is coming into the room and where 
the stuffy air is passing out? 

3. How is your bedroom ventilated at night? How is the air in 
the living room of a small house sometimes rendered unfit for 
breathing? 

4. How may a schoolroom or bedroom be ventilated so that no 
one may be sitting or lying in a draught? 



CHAPTER V 

IMPURITIES IN AIR 

Who has not watched a sunbeam lighting up 
the dust particles which often float in the air of 
a room? 

Where does this dust come from? Where does 
it go to? Is it always in the air? You find it 
lying on your desks and seats any morning the 
caretaker has neglected to wipe it off. 

What is it made of? Some of it, you tell me, 
comes from the streets and roads, and is, there- 
fore, nothing more than finely powdered earth 



36 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

or stones. But did you ever consider whether a 
few of the particles might not be the seeds of 
tiny plants? If so, should they not grow when 
placed upon suitable soil? 

Let us test this idea by watching some soup 
or broth "go bad." 

"What has soup to do with pure air?" you 
ask. And in reply I say, "Wait and see." 

First, strain the soup through perfectly clean, 
well boiled linen, so that you have nothing but 

the clear liquid. Now take 
two bottles or flasks, like 
those shown in figure 10, 
and pour a little of the 

Figure 8. — Two flasks in a x 

pot of boiling water. liquid soup into each flask. 
One flask is open. The other is corked and has 
a bent glass tube running through the cork as 
shown in the figure. Place both flasks or 
bottles in an open kettle in which cold water 
stands as high as the soup stands in the flasks. 
Put the kettle on a hot stove, and keep the 
water boiling in it for an hour. Of course the 
soup will boil also. 

At the end of the hour, allow the water to 
cool; then remove both flasks from the kettle 




IMPURITIES IN AIR 37 

and leave them standing in the kitchen, or 
dining-room for a few days. Examine the sur- 
face of the soup each day, but do not shake the 
flasks. Notice whether a scum forms on the 
surface of the soup in both flasks about the same 
time. If not, on which does the scum form first 
— the open flask, or the corked one? Does the 
soup turn sour? 

If you have performed this experiment care- 
fully — and you can easily do it on a kitchen 
stove — you will find that the soup in the open 
flask has gone bad in a few days, whereas that 
in the corked flask has remained clear and un- 
changed, and in fact, is as good after a week 
or ten days as it w^as when first removed from 
the kettle. What has made the difference? 

If you have a microscope in your school and 
will use it in examining the contents of the two 
flasks, you will find that the soup which has 
gone bad is teeming with thousands of tiny 
creatures, all moving about with a quick trem- 
bling movement. Where did they come from? 
You will find none of these creatures in the 
corked flask. 

Fifty years ago the facts of which I have been 



38 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

speaking were just as well known as they are 
to-day; but at that time even the most learned 
men in Europe did not know how these tiny 
creatures got into the soup. Of course, if the 
experiment is not carefully performed, the soup 
in both flasks will go bad. Moreover, if the 
soup is not boiled for a long time, it is sure to 
go bad. This makes the matter all the harder 
to understand. 

Among the many men who studied soups in 
this way, was a very celebrated Frenchman, 
named Louis Pasteur. His early experiments 
on this subject were made on a common stove. 
He was led to begin them by observing that 
beet-root sugar, in fermenting and forming 
alcohol, sometimes goes bad and produces sour 
alcohol. He had observed also that milk ex- 
posed to the air in warm weather, turns sour. 

As a result of his experiments and observa- 
tions on wine and milk, he came to the conclu- 
sion that the air contains the germs or seeds of 
tiny plants and animals, and that, whenever 
these fall into vegetable or meat soups, they 
start to grow, and they give rise to immense 
numbers of very small creatures, 



IMPURITIES IN AIR 



39 



Pasteur stood alone in this opinion. Up to 
about I860, almost every scientific man in 
Europe believed that when animal or vegetable 
matter began to decay, the very act of decay 
gave rise to the tiny creatures which Pasteur 
found in soup. New life, they thought, arose 
out of decaying matter. 

Before Pasteur could expect anyone to be- 
lieve in the existence of these germs in the air, 
he had to prove that they 
could be obtained from it. 
He did this, in a way so 
simple that you can easily 
use the apparatus which is 
figured on this page, and get 
the same results as he did. 

Take a wide-mouthed bot- 
tle which will hold, if possi- 
ble, a gallon or two of water. 
Fit it with an air-tight cork having two holes 
in it. Into one of these holes fit a short glass 
tube, and into the other a long glass tube which 
will reach to the bottom of the bottle. To the 
outside of the latter attach a rubber tube so 
as to form a syphon. The outer end of the 




Figure 9. — Wide-mouthed 
bottle corked and with two 
glass tubes in the cork, one 
short and one long. 



40 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

shorter tube should be tightly plugged with 
white cotton batting. 

Fill the bottle full of water, insert the cork 
tightly, and start the syphon running. It is 
easy to do this by placing the bottle on a table, 
and then sucking the air out of the rubber tube 
with the mouth , being careful to keep the end of 
the rubber tube below the level of the table. 

As the water runs out of the bottle, air will 
be drawn in through the cotton in the shorter 
tube, and, if you examine this cotton after you 
have filled the bottle a number of times with the 
air of a dusty room, you will see that the cotton 
has become slightly dark in color. Of course 
in a dusty atmosphere, the cotton will darken 
much sooner than in a fairly pure atmosphere. 

That the cotton contains germs you can easily 
prove, as Pasteur did, by dropping a small bit of 
it into boiled soup, and watching the soup go 
bad. 

Pasteur performed experiments like these 
over and over again — even hundreds of times, 
and at length proved beyond any question that 
animal or vegetable soups will not go bad, if 
placed out of the reach of atmospheric dust. 



IMPURITIES IN AIR 41 

One of his flasks he kept for four years without 
its undergoing any change. 

Having proved that the air contains the germs 
of animal and plant life, Pasteur's next step was 
to prove that these germs vary in number in 
different parts of the country. 

In order to do this, he used a flask like the 
one which is shown in the figure on this page. 
You see it has a long pointed neck. 
When testing the purity of the air 
he partly filled one of these flasks 
with soup, and then boiled it for 
an hour, thus driving out the air, 
and killing all the germs in the 
soup. At the end of the boiling, 
he melted the glass at the pointed FiGu^To^vPas- 

i 1 , -i n 1 teur's Flask >ral- 

end so as to seal up the flask per- ed up with snup 
fectly and prevent all air from get- 
ting into it. Then he quickly removed the flask 
from the flame and allowed it to cool. 

On one of his holiday trips from Paris, he 
carried a large number of these sealed flasks with 
him. The opening of these was done witli greal 
care. To avoid the little currents of air about 
his body, he usually lifted each flask above his 




42 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

head, and, with a pair of pincers, broke off the 
tip of the neck just below where it was sealed. 
As he did this, the air above his head rushed 
into the flask and filled it. The flask was then 
carefully lowered and again sealed by melting 
the glass. 

In this way he got into his flasks a fair sam- 
ple of the air of different localities with what- 
ever dust and germs it might contain. The 
flasks were then set aside in a warm place, and 
watched to see which ones would undergo 
change through the growth of germs which had 
entered them with the air. Of the twenty-three 
flasks which he opened to the air on the road to 
his old home at Arbois, only eight went bad; 
whereas, when twenty similar flasks were opened 
in his laboratory yard in Paris, they nearly all 
went bad. 

On Mount Poupet, which is about 2,800 feet 
high, he opened twenty more flasks to the air; 
and of these only five went bad. Not satisfied 
yet, he ascended Mount Blanc and opened 
twenty more flasks to the mountain air. Of 
these only one went bad. 

These experiments of Pasteur's show us 



IMPURITIES IN AIR 43 

where we may expect to find the purest air. 
The purest air will be found on a mountain 
top; less pure air on a hill top, less pure air still, 
in a level farming district, and least of all in 
cities and towns. 

We act upon these conclusions of Pasteur's 
to-day, when w T e wish to avail ourselves of the 
so-called "fresh air treatment" for the cure of 
certain diseases. Consumptives are often sent 
to w r oodland areas upon hills or mountains, 
where they pass as much of their time as possi- 
ble out in the sunshine and open air. Such 
air is fairly free from germs and dust particles, 
and such air, together with good nourishing 
foods, mild exercise, and the oversight of 
a good doctor will often restore consumptive 
people to robust health when nothing else 
will. 

The invisible germs of plant and animal life 
which Pasteur discovered in the air are often 
called microbes. Fortunately only a very few 
of them cause disease; many are harmless and 
some are even useful. Moreover Pasteur has 
taught us two things about them: first, that 
they arc found not only in air, but on every- 



44 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

thing about us; and secondly, that boiling water 
will kill them. 

QUESTIONS 

1. How did Pasteur prove that air in different places contains 
different numbers of microbes, or germs? 

2. Judging from the dust and odor of your schoolroom, would 
you expect that there would be few, or many germs in it? 

3. What can be done to lessen the number of germs on the floors 
and walls of your schoolroom? In the air of your schoolroom? 

4. How can microbes be killed? 



CHAPTER VI 

TOBACCO SMOKE IN AIR 

What other things are in air besides dust and 
germs? 

You will tell me that there are the invisible 
gases of impure air as it comes from the lungs 
in breathing. Yes, and in our houses, especially 
in winter, there is the odor of food cooking on 
the kitchen stove. This odor is not so bad for 
the health, as the smoke from burning food. 
When, instead of being properly cooked, food 
is burnt on the top of a hot stove, or, in an oven, 
then the smoke which fills the kitchen renders 
the air impure and unfit for breathing. 



TOBACCO SMOKE IN AIR 45 

Can you think of anything else which spoils 
the air in our houses, especially in the winter 
evenings? None of you can. 

Well, I am not surprised, because we are so 
accustomed to this further way of spoiling the 
air, that we are apt to overlook it altogether. I 
mean, spoiling the air with tobacco smoke. 

Many people do not think of tobacco smoke 
as a cause of the air being bad. And yet it is. 
They will say that dust and disease germs and 
the odors of decaying meat and vegetables, and 
sewer gas and bad drains and musty rooms and 
a host of other things will all spoil the air; but 
they will hesitate to say that tobacco smoke 
is as bad as some of the other things named 
above. 

Many girls and women will say, "Why, our 
fathers and brothers have smoked ever since 
they were boys, and it does not appear to have 
done them much harm." This is no doubt very 
true. Millions of men have smoked tobacco 
ever since the time w T hen Sir Walter Raleigh 
is said to have carried the weed over to Eng- 
land; but it is nevertheless true that the habit 
of smoking tobacco is bad for all young people. 



46 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

What is more to our purpose just now is that 
you young people should know that tobacco 
smoke pollutes the air and sometimes causes 
delicate people and very young children to 
become ill. 

Most doctors, if their opinion were asked, 
would agree in saying that infants and delicate 
children cannot grow up into sturdy, robust 
boys or girls, if they have to live much in air 
that is poisoned with tobacco smoke. 

The tobacco smoke would first enter the 
lungs and would then affect the blood, and 
through the blood it would injure the nerves 1 , 
and the health of the child. Some medical 
men doubt whether this is true; but every 
thoughtful and careful doctor knows that to- 
bacco smoke in the living rooms of houses 
cannot but spoil the air especially in winter, 
when people spend much of their time indoors. 

It is bad enough to breathe air that has 
already been once in the lungs of some other 
person; it is doubly bad to have to breathe it 
when it has been rendered still more impure 
with tobacco smoke. 

For, just consider where the smoke comes 



TOBACCO SMOKE IN AIR 47 

from. It first passes from a cigar or cigarette 
or pipe, into the mouth of the smoker, and from 
the smoker's mouth it passes into the air. Now, 
no cleanly person should breathe this air; and 
no reasonable or thoughtful smoker should in- 
flict such polluted air upon other people. 

In a few years many of you young people will 
be the heads of houses of your own. It will 
make a tremendous difference to your health, 
comfort, and happiness whether you live in 
clean, well-ventilated homes, or in musty, ill- 
smelling ones. Now one of the first rules of 
health is to breathe pure fresh air. But how 
can you breathe pure air in your homes if the 
living rooms are befogged and poisoned with 
tobacco smoke. "Oh," you say, "we can open 
the windows and let out all the smoke." You 
may try to do so, but you cannot. Ventilation 
will give you fresh air, but it will not immedi- 
ately remove the odor of tobacco smoke from 
carpets, curtains, and furniture. 

The fact is that once the smoking habit lias 
been formed, a smoker becomes a somewhat 
selfish man. Either he does not know thai he 
is spoiling the air for his family, or, if lie knows. 



48 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

he may not be unselfish enough to give up his 
pipe for the benefit of those whom it is his duty 
to care for. 

In summer he can sit outside, and then his 
smoking will do less harm; but in winter, if he 
smokes in the living room, he certainly shows 
little regard for the well-being of his wife and 
children. Of course, if a man is wealthy, he can 
have a smoking room all to himself. If he has 
such a room, it should be the best ventilated one 
in the house, and if he is a wise parent, he will 
take good care not to allow any of his young 
children to remain in this room, while he or his 
guests are smoking. 

Later on in our studies we shall see that 
there are other reasons why you lads should not 
learn to smoke; but just now my chief concern 
is that you should count tobacco smoking as one 
of the means of spoiling fresh air, which it 
undoubtedly is. 

Let me now sum up very briefly the different 
ways in which the air of our houses, schools, 
shops and factories may become spoilt. 

In the first place, it is spoilt when it has been 
breathed once; in the second place it is spoilt 



CARE OF THE HAIR 49 

by dust or floating specks of matter; and lastly 
it is spoilt by tobacco smoke. 

If you care, therefore, for your own health or 
for the health of others, you will avoid breathing 
stuffy, dusty and ill-smelling air yourself, and 
you will do everything in your power to guard 
others from breathing such air. 

QUESTIONS 

1. In what different ways may pure air be made impure? 

2. Why do railroad and steamboat companies provide smoking 
rooms for passengers? 



CHAPTER VII 

CARE OF THE HAIR 

How shall we explain the fact that changes 
in the color and thickness of hair occur at such 
different times in different men? In one man it 
undergoes a rapid change in color early in life, 
no matter how much care he may give it; in 
another man it remains thick and unchanged 
up to old age, even when no special care has 
been given to it. 

The only explanation for these differences is 
that a man or woman inherits them from par- 



50 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

ents or near relatives. A father or mother 
whose hair has turned gray early in life, will 
often have sons or daughters or else grandsons 
or granddaughters whose hair will turn gray 
early. And the same thing is true of baldness. 
A young man of thirty who finds his hair falling 
out and knows that his father's hair also fell out 
at about the same age, need look no further for 
an explanation of his baldness. Of course, I am 
not now speaking of persons whose hair has 
fallen out as a result of disease. 

These defects, however, should not discourage 
anyone from taking the best possible care of the 
hair. A great matter in caring for health is to 
learn all we can about the weaknesses of our 
bodies. For, just as we resemble our parents or 
grandparents in features, w^alk or gesture, so we 
may be sure that we inherit from these relatives 
some defects of body or mind or both, which 
possibly we learn about, only when we have 
arrived at manhood or womanhood. 

A young man, if wise, will try to discover 
his inherited defects as soon as possible, and 
will thenceforward so order his daily life as to 
preserve his health and strength as long as 



CARE OF THE HAIR 



51 



outer or _ 
scar fskin 




Figure 11. — Hair, its nerve, oil gland and blood supply. 

possible. So, even if a man is descended from 
a gray-haired or bald-headed family, he should 
still take care of his hair. 

In caring for the hair, three things must be 
kept in mind, the oil gland, the blood supply, 
and the nerve supply. The natural oil of the 
hair, which comes out from the oil gland at the 
side of each hair, catches some of the dust 
particles which arc always present in air, and 
therefore the hair soon becomes dirty. 

Hence the first rule for the en re of the hair is 



52 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

to wash it. This should be done about once a 
week, with luke-warm water and eastile soap. 
The frequency will depend upon the amount 
of natural oil on the hair, and upon whether 
one lives much in a dusty or in a pure at- 
mosphere. 

The best time for the washing is just before 
going to bed, so as to reduce the risk of catching 
cold. The hair should be thoroughly dried; if 
not, the drying up of the water takes heat from 
the head, cools it too much, and a cold is the 
result. For this reason, it is wise in winter after 
washing to sleep with a handkerchief or light 
towel round the head. 

Another good rule is to comb and brush the 
hair three or four times a day. This removes 
from the scalp the white scales known as dan- 
druff, and the friction reddens the skin and 
brings more blood to the roots of the hair. 
Brisk, hard rubbing with the fingers (massage) 
will also increase the flow of blood to the scalp. 

What is the good of getting more blood to 
go to the hair? Just this. The great work of 
the blood, in every part of the body, is to carry 
in nourishment and to carry away dead waste. 



CARE OF THE HAIR 53 

Whatever, therefore, will make the blood go 
more quickly to the hair must be good for the 
hair, because it will thus get more nourishment; 
the oil glands will do their work better, the 
nerve threads will do their work better, and the 
hair will be stronger and healthier, and will not 
turn gray so soon nor fall out so early. 

Of course, combs and brushes should be kept 
thoroughly clean, otherwise there would be no 
use in washing the hair. Surely, I need not say 
that the combs and brushes in public washrooms 
should not be used. Nor should I have to add 
that no one should go to a barber's shop in 
which unclean combs, scissors, brushes, or 
razors are used. 

I know a man who was a stranger in a city, 
and who wished to have his hair cut. He went 
into the first barber shop he came to. A short 
time afterwards, he was amazed to find his scalp 
itchy and very uncomfortable, and upon consult- 
ing a doctor, he was told that he had caught 
the horrible disease called barber's itch. The 
tiny disease germs had begun to grow about 
the roots of his hair. Luckily for him, however, 
he soon had them killed, or they would have 



54 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

caused the loss of much of his hair with a great 
deal of discomfort besides. 

Is it worth while to give you girls advice 
about curling your hair with hot tongs? The 
heat kills the hair, and dead hair tends to fall 
out. If you must curl your hair, use soft silk 
rags with which to do it, but don't pull on the 
hair, or you will hurt the root and make the 
hair fall out. Sheet lead and hard paper are 
almost as bad as curling tongs. Pulling on the 
hair in combing out the tangles is another cause 
of hair falling out. 

A word of advice to boys. Don't wear tight- 
fitting, hard, and heavy hats or caps. These 
lessen the flow of blood to the hair, with the 
result that the hair loses some of the nourish- 
ment it needs, and the dead waste at the root 
is not carried away as it ought to be. The 
growing point is suffocated, and, in the end, the 
hair dies and falls out. 

Hats and caps should be light, and should 
have small openings in the top to admit air. 
A woman's head-gear is generally lighter than 
a man's, and, for this reason, she is not so often 
bald as a man. Delicate people may have tg 



CARE OF THE HAIR 55 

wear somewhat heavy hats and caps, but 
healthy people should never do so. 

It sometimes happens that the beauty of a 
face is spoilt by an extra growth of hair. Such 
hair can be removed by the use of a fine needle 
and a current of electricity. They must be 
removed one by one. The process is a very 
slow one if there are many hairs to remove; 
but an expert surgeon will, in time, take out 
every extra hair. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What arc the advantages of keeping the hair short, especially 
in young children? What is the advantage of brushing the hair? 
Of massaging the hair. 

2. What diseases of the scalp are frequently caught in school? 
[Insects (lice) are best killed by an application of coal-oil to the 
scalp. Or, a carbolic acid lotion of 1 part acid to 20 parts of warm 
water may be used.] 

3. In trying to get rid of barber's itch, will it be necessary to 
change the cap which the person usually wears, or at least to change 
the lining? If a child with this disease should change the peg on 
which his cap was hung at school, or at home, what would likely be 
the effect upon other children using this peg? 



56 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



CHAPTER VIII 



CARE OF THE SKIN AND NAILS 

You may have noticed when you have cut 
or broken the skin on your finger that the cut 
sometimes heals quickly. Sometimes though, it 
takes long to heal, becoming red and sore and 
festering. This is because some of the invisible 
germs in the air have got into the wound and 
have started to grow. In their growth, they 
destroy some of the tender flesh, and make the 
cut hot and painful. Then the doctor has to 
wash the wound out with great care, and cover 
it afterwards, and try to prevent any more 
growth of these invisible plants. 

The doctor, in fact, does exactly the same 
thing as a careful gardener does when a tree 
gets its bark cut or broken. The gardener has 
learned that a tree often begins to rot when 
part of its bark or wood has been removed. So 
he covers the cut with paint. This prevents 
the invisible germs from alighting upon the 
wound and beginning to grow on the moist 
wood. It is now well known that decay in a 



CARE OF THE SKIN AND NAILS 







Figure 12. — Lower part of the trunk of an oak tree showing a rotten part 
near the ground which is slowly healing. Also the stump of limb that has 
been cut off and is healing. 

tree nearly always begins where microbes start 
to grow. 

Again, the decay of fruit is caused by the 
growth of invisible germs, and, therefore, when 
a rotten apple or orange is packed among sound 
ones, decay soon spreads to the sound fruit. 



58 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

In order to prevent the decay from spreading, 
some packers of apples and oranges are careful 
to wrap up each one in paper. 

From what has been said about the skin and 
about trees and fruits, you learn that the first 
thing to be done in the case of cuts or wounds 
of the skin ; is to see that they are washed clean 
with soap and well-boiled water. They should 
then be covered with a clean cotton or linen 
cloth to prevent disease germs from getting into 
the wound and perhaps into the blood, and thus 
causing blood-poisoning. 

For the same reason, pimples or boils should 
never be pricked with a pin or opened with a 
common pen-knife. A needle or sharp knife- 
blade may be made quite safe for opening a 
boil or abscess, by boiling it in water for ten 
minutes. Or, a needle may be heated red-hot 
in a fire and then cooled, after which it is safe 
to use. In both cases the heat kills any invisi- 
ble germs that may cling to the needle or knife, 
and that might otherwise get into the pimple 
or abscess and cause blood-poisoning and per- 
haps death. 

Next to caring for cuts, bruises, or pimples on 



CARE OF THE SKIN AND NAILS 59 

the skin, comes the very important question of 
how we shall treat the skin so that it shall 
always be able to do its work well. All I shall 
say about the matter now is that we must bathe 
the skin daily and change our underclothing 
at least weekly. In the next chapter, you will 
be told how bathing should be done. 

Every child should know that the skin con- 
sists of two layers, an outer one, called the scarf- 
skin, which has no feeling in it, and an inner one, 
the true skin, which contains blood and nerves, 
and which hurts us very much when it is cut or 
deeply pricked. 

When you study the nails closely, you slowly 
come to see that they are nothing more than 
thickened scarf-skin. Like the scarf-skin, the 
nails have no blood vessels in them and no 
nerves. They neither bleed nor pain us when 
we cut them. As they keep growing all the 
time and do not rub off in small flakes as the 
skin does, they must be cut from time to time 
in order to prevent them from becoming too 
Ion p. 

It is the true skin ai the root of the nail 
which makes the nail grow out towards the tip 



60 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



all the time, just as it is the true skin under- 
neath which gives rise to the outer or scarf-skin. 

What is the use of the nails? You will tell 
me at once that they protect the soft flesh at the 
ends of the fingers and toes. So they do, and in 
addition, the finger-nails help in picking up or 
in handling very small objects. 

Should the nails be cared for as the skin is or 
may we neglect them without any danger to 
ourselves or to others? The answer to this 
question will depend upon our calling in life. 
If a man is a surgeon and has to perform a 
surgical operation upon one of his patients, 
then the life of his patient may depend upon 
whether the doctor keeps his nails clean or not. 

If disease germs from any source happen to 
enter the wound which the surgeon makes, 
then the patient may lose his life. Fortunately, 
all well-trained surgeons know this very well, 
and there are no men in the world who keep 
their clothing and their hands and nails so clean 
as careful surgeons. Nor is there any room in 
the world so clean as the one in a hospital in 
which a careful surgeon operates. 

The habit of biting the nails is not merely a 






CARE OF THE SKIN AND NAILS 61 

dirty habit, it is a dangerous one as well, be- 
cause people who bite their nails run the risk of 
swallowing some of the many microbes that 
are mingled with the dirt under the nails. You 
must not think that many people have caught 
diseases from biting their nails. Excepting in 
the case of careless nurses, dentists, or surgeons, 
it is very likely true that very few diseases have 
been spread in this way. But, apart from any 
danger of this kind, it is fitting that we should 
keep the nails clean, because well-kept finger- 
nails are pleasing to look at. Dirty nails are 
abominable. 

Nails that have been bitten off for years so 
that the fingers are stubby, and the flesh rolled 
over the tip of each nail, are even more abomin- 
able. Most of you have no doubt seen such 
finger-nails and have noticed that their owner is 
ashamed of them. Grown up people who have 
bitten their finger-nails for years, will often keep 
their ugly finger tips out of sight. 

How are finger-nails to be kept clean? The 
only articles needed are a nail-brush, a nail- 
cleaner, and a fib. The two latter are often 
combined in one piece. The brush should be 



62 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 





Figure 13. — Hand with Bitten 
Nails 



Figure 14. — Well-kept Finger Nails 



used with soap and water until the dirt becomes 
quite soft. It can then be removed without any 
trouble by means of the nail-cleaner. It is a 
mistake to use a pen-knife to remove dirt, unless 
the blade is rather dull, because a sharp blade 
cuts or scratches the under surface of the nail, 
and later on the dirt clings to these scratches, 
and it then becomes a difficult matter to remove 
it. 

When the nails have grown too long, they 
should be cut with a pair of sharp scissors — 
not with a pen-knife. Their shape should be 



BATHING 63 

rounded like the end of the finger, not square, 
nor pointed. After cutting, they should be 
made smooth with the file. 

Toe-nails should be cut straight across. This 
prevents them from growing into the flesh at 
the corners, as they do sometimes, especially 
if they are pressed upon by tight shoes. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Explain how some cuts, or deep scratches are slow in healing. 
How do wounds heal on trees? Do wounds ever cause decay of the 
wood? How is this prevented? 

2. How is blood-poisoning sometimes caused in surgical opera- 
tions? Can you suggest a reason why it may be more dangerous 
to perform a surgical operation in a private house than in a hospital? 

3. What are the uses of finger-nails? Why should they be kept 
clean? How should they be cut? How shaped? 



CHAPTER IX 

BATHING 



You will be surprised to learn that in the days 
of the Roman Emperors, Rome had splendid 
public and private baths. In still earlier times, 
the Romans used to bathe in the Tiber alter 
taking exercise; but when ample public supplies 
of water had been brought to the city, large 



64 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 






public swimming baths, and at a still later date, 
small public and private ones, came into general 
use. But, as stated above, it was in the days 
of the Emperors that the public baths came to be 
structures of great splendor. "To such a pitch 
of luxury have we reached/ J says Seneca, a 
Roman writer, "that we are dissatisfied if we do 
not tread on gems in our baths. " 

The baths of many wealthy Romans were 
very costly structures. Swimming baths, warm 

baths, hot-air baths, and 
vapor baths were all in 
common use. As they 
had no true soaps, they 
used a scraper of curved 
-^ metal with which to re- 
move the scarf-skin from 

Figure 15. — Three forms of scrap- t>tie DOCly. 

ers used by the Romans in taking . _ . . 

off the scarf-skin. Also a small 1 mention these thmgS 

flask of oil for anointing the skin. . 1 , 

in order that you may 
understand how high a value educated Romans 
placed upon cleanliness of the skin. They seem 
to have learned much better than we have that 
a person, unless very strong, cannot remain long 
in good health if he does not keep his skin clean. 




BATHING 65 

You will understand the reason of this, when 
I tell you that from one to four pints of sweat 
come out of the skin every twenty-four hours. 
You must remember also that the skin is grow- 
ing from beneath the surface all the time. 
Sweat is in reality a kind of poison which is 
gathered up from all over the body. When it 
dries up, it leaves behind it on the skin, salts 
and other matters which, along with the scarf- 
skin, should be removed by the daily bath. A 
weekly, or even a monthly bath, is all that some 
people ever take. But weekly baths are not 
enough, if we wish to keep the skin so clean that 
it can do its work well. 

A clean body, clean clothing, a clean house, a 
clean yard, clean outbuildings, and a clean vil- 
lage or town are all forms of cleanliness with- 
out which individual health and public health 
are impossible. 

Baths are spoken of as hot, when the water is 
at a temperature of about 100° F. to 108° F.; as 
warm, when the water is from 96° to 100°; as 
tepid, when the water is from 86° to 96°; ;is 
cool, when between 65° and 80° ) and as cold, 
when from 50 t<> 65°, 



66 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

And first; as regards cold baths : many middle- 
aged people say that they cannot stand the 
effects of a cold bath. This may be true of peo- 
ple who are over middle life; but it is not true 
of most young people. There is not one strong 
person in a hundred who will not be benefited 
by a cold bath. Where there is no bath-room 
in a house, the sponge bath may be used instead. 
All that is required for this is a basin, a rough 
towel and a sponge ; and surely there is no house 
in the land so poor as not to be able to afford 
these articles. 

The truth is that most people dislike the cold, 
and so do not take a cold bath. It takes a good 
deal of courage to walk from a warm bed and 
plunge into water at a temperature of 60° to 
65°. But all those who are in the habit of doing 
this say that they get great benefit from it. It 
wakes up mind and body better than anything 
else does. 

Soap should be used in taking baths. The 
cold water alone gives a shock to the body that 
is good for it; but it is not cleansing. After 
covering the skin with a lather of soap, the 
bather should lie in the water and rub the body 



BATHING 67 

with a hand-towel or sponge. He should then 
dry himself by rubbing vigorously with a coarse 
towel until his body is all in a pink glow. 

One should not remain in a cold bath longer 
than about half-a-minute. The first effect is to 
drive the blood away from the skin into the in- 
ward parts. After coming out of the water, the 
brisk rubbing helps to make the blood return 
to the skin again, and the bather should then 
feel warm, comfortable, and well. 

This warm feeling, following a quick cold 
bath, is the best test of whether a cold bath 
agrees with us or not. If we feel chilly, and 
remain so for several hours, we shall do well to 
use a cool bath instead, or even a tepid one. 
But most people can take a cold bath daily and 
be the better for it, if only they will take a little 
trouble. If cold baths are begun in the warm 
weather of summer and continued daily into the 
autumn and winter, they will agree with and 
benefit all but the very delicate and the aged. 
But no cold bath should be taken in a cold 
bathroom. The room should be comfortably 
warm. 

Once a week a warm bath should be taken 



68 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 16. — A large Roman Bath. 

before going to bed. This softens the skin and 
removes matter which cold water will scarcely 
remove. Moreover, taking a warm bath at 
night lessens the chance of catching cold, just 
as washing the head at night does. In fact, the 
warm bath once a week and the washing of the 
scalp can both be done at the same time. The 



BATHING 69 

warm bath has a very decided effect upon the 
bather. For one thing it is found to be soothing, 
especially to nervous people, and for this reason 
it tends to promote sleep. It is particularly 
agreeable after hard bodily labor, and it quickly 
removes pain in the muscles or soreness of the 
joints. 

The tepid bath is used chiefly for cleansing 
purposes, and, apart from this, has little or no 
effect upon the health. When applied to the 
face and hands in cold weather, tepid or warm 
water tends to cause chapping and roughening 
of the skin. For this reason, it is better in 
winter to wash with cold water. 

The hot bath has a very marked effect upon 
the body, so marked indeed that it should not 
be taken except under the advice of a physician. 
It has been found to be of great benefit in treat- 
ing diseases like neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, 
and some kinds of heart disease; but no sick 
person should risk taking baths at tempera- 
tures of 102° F. to 108° F., except under the 
advice of a physician. 

To sum up; warm baths are best suited for 
delicate people, for young children, and for the 



70 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

aged; whereas cold baths are best suited for the 
active and strong. But regular daily bathing of 
some kind should be practiced by everyone who 
wishes to take care of his health. 

Before closing this chapter, it may be of 
interest to some of you to know that massaging 
the face; that is, pinching the skin and kneading 
the flesh will prevent the on-coming of wrinkles 
and will help to remove pimples and blotches. 
The improvement of the complexion by massage 
is due to the improved circulation of the blood 
brought about by the massage. 

QUESTIONS 

1. How do we know that the Romans placed a high value on 
bathing? How often should we bathe? Why so often? Why 
should the underclothing be kept clean as well as the skin? 

2. At what temperature are baths taken? How are baths at 
different temperatures described? 

3. How often should a warm bath be taken by healthy people? 
For what purposes? Would it be wise to take a cold bath in a very 
cold room? Why not? 

4. Describe the most convenient method of bathing, for persons 
who have no bathrooms or bath-tubs. 



THE TEETH 



71 



CHAPTER X 



ENAMEL 
DENTIN 
PULP 
CEMENTUM 



ARTERY 7 
VEIN 



BONE 



THE TEETH 

The part of a tooth which we can see is the 
croivn, and the part that is hidden in the jaw is 
the root. Running up 
into the middle of a 
tooth from the tip of 
its root, is a small 
canal into which and 
out of which blood 
passes through small 
tubes. This blood 
nourishes the tooth 
and keeps it alive and 
well. 

In addition to the 
blood tubes, a fine 
nerve passes up the 
canal to the pulp 

CavitV in the middle Figure 17. — Section of a tooth showing 

enamel, dentine, cement and pulp cavity. 

of the tooth. The 

nerve tolls us when anything goes wrong in the 

inside of the tooth. If the nerve gets very 




72 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

much worried, we say the tooth is aching. But 
no healthy tooth ever aches. The ache always 
comes on when a cavity has formed somewhere 
in a tooth, and when air or small pieces of food 
have got into the cavity far enough to worry 
the nerve. If we wish, therefore, to avoid 
toothache, we should take great care of our 
teeth. 

What makes a tooth decay? There are 
different causes, of course, but in most cases the 
decay starts where small particles of food stick 
to the teeth. If, after a meal, you look into a 
mirror, and examine your teeth, you will see 
little bits of food in white patches along the 
edge of the gum and between the teeth. After 
every meal these patches of food should be 
removed in part by a quill toothpick, and the 
rest should be brushed off. 

Because, if we do not keep our teeth clean, 
some very, very tiny plants begin to grow on 
these particles of food and start the decay of 
the teeth. You will think it very strange that 
plants should grow on the teeth, but they do. 
If you were to take a microscope and look at 
gome of this white stuff on the teeth, you would 



THE TEETH 73 

find some very small plants which look like 
little rods. 

Of course, these plants are never big enough 
to be seen with the naked eye. 

After what you have read about Pasteur's 
work with soup, you will not need to be told 
where these germs come from. They are in air 
and in food, and therefore soon get on the teeth. 
All that these microbes need in order to grow 
is a good moist warm soil, and this soil they 
find all ready at hand for them in the patches 
of food which cling to the teeth. 

Just as the rain and heat of summer help to 
make the grass and flowers grow in our gardens, 
so the moisture and warmth of the mouth make 
these invisible plants grow, first on the white 
patches of food, and then on the teeth. 

But how do they manage to make a tooth 
decay? It is so hard and firm, one would think 
that these little plants could do no harm to a 
strong, healthy tooth. 

Well, in the first stage of their growth these 
plants do no harm. They simply grow and 
increase in number in the little particles of 
food. Very soon this food starts to spoil, and, 



74 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

as the tiny plants grow on the decaying food, 
an acid, something like vinegar, forms on the 
tooth and begins to make it decay. 

At first the harm done is very slight indeed; 
but when the food particles are not brushed off 
after every meal, the decay goes on from month 
to month, and from year to year, until at length 
we feel the tooth a little sore, and on getting 
some one to look at it, we find that there is a 
cavity in it. 

For many a day we do not notice the decay 
going on. There is no nerve on the outside of a 
tooth; and so, when the decay begins, we do 
not feel any pain. It is only when the decay 
has reached the little space in the middle of the 
tooth, where the nerve lies, that we feel pain. 

But invisible plants, by their growth, not 
merely decay the teeth ; they cause stones which 
are as hard as marble to decay. If you will 
take the trouble to look at the very old tomb- 
stones in any old burial ground, you will see 
that they are quite unlike the new ones. The 
smooth polish that was once on them, is there 
no longer. The letters and dates can hardly be 
read. They are more or less covered with moss. 



THE TEETH 75 

How have they become so changed? The 
answer is that their surface has been altered 
in part by the growth of invisible plants, and 
that after this has gone on for many }'ears, 
another kind of plant, the mosses, begin to 
grow on them, and then the decay goes on 
faster than ever. 

Stones from volcanoes have been worn down 
and partly turned into soil in this same way. 
So we need not winder any longer as to how 
these invisible plants make cavities in our teeth. 

Another way in which decay may begin is by 
seeds of berries or pieces of bone, or even the 
bristles of a tooth-brush, getting between the 
gum and the root of the tooth. When this 
occurs, it gives a chance to the invisible plants 
to start to grow in the tiny wound, and, since 
the root of the tooth is much softer than the 
crown, the decay goes on all the faster. So, 
you must be careful to remove all such things. 

The teeth should be brushed up and down, 
never across from front to back. Always use 
a brush the brist les of which do not spread. 
Fine tooth powder should be used to polish the 
enamel, and some harmless mouth wash like 



76 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

listerine to rinse the mouth and kill disease 
germs. Now and again the crown of each tooth 
should be polished with tooth powder on a 
narrow chisel-like piece of wood, so as to pre- 
vent the formation of a crust, which is known 
as tartar. 

A quill or wooden toothpick should be used 
in removing the tougher pieces of food which 
may become fixed between the teeth. 

Before using a new brush for the first time 
soak it in water from twelve to fifteen hours. 
This prevents the bristles from coming out. If 
you find your brush too stiff, soak in warm water 
a few minutes before using it. Use a small 
brush in order that there may be room enough 
for it between the cheeks and the teeth. 

Always brush from the gums towards the 
grinding surfaces of the teeth. Never brush 
across the teeth as this habit makes it impos- 
sible to reach the parts requiring it most, and 
frequently cuts deep grooves in the necks of the 
teeth, necessitating fillings, and causing the 
gums to fall away from the teeth. 

The proper way to use a brush is as follows: 
beginning at the upper back teeth, place the 






THE TEETH 77 

bristles high up on the gums and by rotary- 
motion carry them straight down past the ends 
of the teeth. In this way you have the benefit 
of massaging the gums, and brushing all foreign 
material from the surface of the teeth. Repeat 
with the teeth in the lower jaw, but in this case, 
you will of course brush from the lower gums 
upward. 

After having brushed the teeth thoroughly in 
this manner, it is sometimes wise to place the 
brush with the bristles against the teeth ; agitate 
slightly so that the bristles may penetrate be- 
tween the teeth, and then rotate towards the 
grinding surface of the teeth. Continue this 
procedure until you have covered all the teeth, 
brushing downward for the uppers and upward 
for the lowers. 

Any difficulty experienced in using this 
method soon disappears with practice. The 
inner and grinding surfaces of the teeth should 
be brushed as carefully as the outer surfaces. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Make a drawing of a tooth from memory and mark upon it 
tho name of each part. What is the use of the little hole in the 
root? 

2. What ifl the chief cause of the decay of teeth? On what 



78 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

do these tiny plants, or bacteria, grow at first? Where, after- 
wards? 

3. How may cracks be made in the covering of a tooth? Will 
these cracks promote or retard the decay of teeth? Describe one 
way in which stones are made to decay. 

4. Would it be fair to reason thus: — Decayed teeth cause poor 
mastication of food; poor mastication leads to ill-digestion of food; 
ill-digestion or indigestion causes poor blood; and poor blood leads 
to lack of growth and lack of strength in children? 

5. What is one cause of foul breath? How can it be remedied? 



CHAPTER XI 

CARE OF THE EARS 

The chief use of the outer ear is to help us to 
hear a little better than we could without it. 
The real ear lies deep in the bone in the 
z p rim head, and is, therefore, so well 
covered up that it can be 
harmed only when people are 
very careless, or very igno- 
rant. None of you young people 
would wish to be thought 
either ignorant or careless, and 
FiGURE^T-outerEar, therefore will, no doubt, be glad 
>r to learn how to take care of the 




opening into the ear 

canal. /» i • 

organ of hearing. 



Surely it is not necessary to tell you not to 






CARE OF THE EARS 79 

put small round objects, like beans or peas, into 
the outer ear. 

To be sure, an accident like this sometimes 
happens amongst farmers. During harvest time, 
in handling the ripe grain, a seed of wheat, peas, 
etc., may get into the outer ear, and when not 
removed in time the warmth and moisture 
causes the grain to swell and start to grow. As 
a result, the person suffers great pain. 

Objects like beads may be very hard to get 
out. Sometimes in trying to get them out, 
they are forced further inward and fastened 
so firmly in the ear canal, that they can be re- 
moved only with great difficulty. Quite often, 
they will fall out, if the head is bent over to one 
side and the outer ear pulled so as to straighten 
the canal. 

The outer part of the canal is lined with wax- 
glands and hairs. The latter keep out the larger 
dust particles, and any small insect that might 
try to enter the canal. Should an insect get 
in, it should be at once smothered with oil, or 
water. After it is dead, it will either fall out 
on inclining the ear to one side, or it may be 
removed by syringing the ear with warm water. 



80 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Snail 
Shell, 






Figure 19. — Outer, Middle and Internal Ear. The latter consists of the semi- 
circular canals and snail shell. The middle ear lies between the drum and 
the internal ear. 

The syringe will also remove any cakes of wax 
that may form in the canal. It is not necessary 
to drop oil into the ear to soften the wax. As a 
rule, ear-wax is soft and comes away of its own 
accord from every healthy ear. But sometimes 
it slowly hardens in the crooked canal, and 
causes slight deafness. People who work much 
in dusty air are subject to this kind of trouble. 
They often undertake to remove the wax by the 
aid of ear-scoops or mops, and sometimes do 
themselves great harm. These little instru- 
ments are very useful in the hands of a skilled 
physician but are dangerous when used by 
others. 



CAKE OF THE EARS 81 

I once knew a man who pierced his ear drum 
while cleaning his ear with the blunt end of a 
darning needle. Ever since, he has had a buzz- 
ing in his ear, something like the noise that 
comes from a telegraph wire when the wind is 
blowing hard. 

The best thing to do, therefore, when dulness 
of hearing comes on, is to go to a good physician 
and be guided by his advice. 

While the outer ear and the canal may cause 
us a little trouble and pain now and again, it 
is nearly always the middle ear, lying inside of 
the drum, which gives rise to most of our ear 
troubles. The middle ear is a little cavity in the 
head, situated about an inch above the roof of 
the throat, and joined to the throat by a little 
tube — the Eustachian tube. 

A "cold in the head," which has lasted for a 
long time, sometimes spreads up to the middle 
ear, along the Eustachian tube. The redness, 
heat, and swelling in the throat and nose are 
followed by redness, heat, and swelling in the 
middle ear, and then we have ear-ache. 

In very bad cases, the ear drum may break, 
and the ear-ache be followed by " running at the 



82 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

ear." If long continued, this is always serious, 
because, it spreads to other openings in the 
bones of the head, and then death may result. 
For this reason, some life insurance companies 
will not insure the life of any person who suffers 
from this kind of trouble. 

Children who suffer from measles, scarlet 
fever, or diphtheria are always in danger of 
having trouble with their ears. For this reason, 
the doctor who attends the children is always 
on the lookout for ear-ache during the course 
of these diseases, and he places a flannel bandage 
round the ears to guard against inflammation of 
the middle ear. 

How many of you young people, when you 
grow up, will use some of the numerous "ear- 
drops" which are advertised for the cure of 
ear-ache? Or, how many of you will allow 
sweet oil and laudanum, or even strong brandy, 
to be dropped into an aching ear? How many 
of you will still use the old-fashioned remedy 
of roasted onions as a poultice? 

The hot onions are really quite safe but the 
other remedies are not. Heat is always sooth- 
ing to a painful ear. It relieves the pain much 



CARE OF THE EARS 83 

better than the ear-drops do. Anyone may 
prove this for himself by simply dropping some 
warm water into an aching ear, and afterwards 
getting the sufferer to lie with the ear upon a 
rubber bag filled with water as hot as can be 
borne. This is a good remedy to use until the 
help of a doctor can be obtained. 

In case of delicate children, or of adults who 
are subject to ear-ache, it is a good plan to use 
the old-fashioned night cap, especially if the 
bedroom is a cold one. Sometimes a child 
wakes up in the middle of the night suffering 
from ear-ache. This is often caused by the 
ear next to the pillow being unduly heated in 
the early part of the night. Later on, the 
child turns on the other side, and the over- 
heated ear is exposed to the cold air of the 
room, with the result that the ear begins to 
ache. 

It is proper that pupils should test their sense 
of hearing. This can easily be done by the 
ticking of a watch. Each ear should be tested 
separately. One ear should be covered with a 
pad of cloth and then bandaged with a hand- 
kerchief, so as to exclude all sounds. Then the 



84 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

pupil should close his eyes, while a comrade 
holds a watch, first far away, and then gradually 
nearer to the ear which is being tested. 

All the while the pupil should be asked 
whether he hears the ticking or not. In this 
way, the distance at which he can just hear the 
watch ticking can be found out and measured. 
The other ear should then be tested in the same 
way. Of course, the distance at which the 
ticking can be heard will depend very largely 
upon the kind of watch. Some tick much louder 
than others. The average distance for the class 
should be taken, and then it can be seen which 
pupils are dull of hearing. 

Some teachers prefer to test the hearing of 
pupils by speaking to them in a whisper. This 
method has one advantage over the other. You 
can never be quite sure when you use a watch, 
unless it is a stop-watch, whether the pupil 
actually hears the ticking as far away as 
he supposes. But, you can test his hearing 
by asking him different questions in whispers 
and always whispering the questions equally 
loud, while you move nearer him, or farther 
away. 



THE EYES 85 

QUESTIONS 

1. What is meant by the outer ear? What is the name of the 
partition which closes the inner end of the canal? What part of 
the ear lies next to the drum but deeper in the head? 

2. What objects sometimes get fastened in the canal? How is 
wax best removed from the ear canal? How may a pea cause more 
trouble in the canal than a bead of the same size? 

3. Describe one cause of ear-ache. How does this trouble often 
begin? What are the signs of a sore throat? What is a good remedy 
for a bad ear-ache until the doctor comes? 

4. What infectious diseases are likely to impair hearing? If a 
very young child becomes deaf, what language trouble may follow 
from the deafness? 



CHAPTER XII 

THE EYES 

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to see 
a crayfish or a minnow in a brook when the sun 
is shining full on the water, or to read the names 
of the books in a book-case w 7 hen the front of 
the case is covered w T ith glass? Or, have you 
noticed how hard it is to see some parts of a 
blackboard in a schoolroom? 

In all these cases, a person, if he wishes to 
see things clearly, must move from one place to 
another or wriggle from side to side in his seat. 
Of course, in some schoolrooms the blackboards 



86 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




» ; Lachrymal 
Duct 

Figure 20. — Eye, showing the tear gland, and the tear duct for 
carrying the tears down into the nose. 

are so good and so well placed that every boy 
and girl in the room can see clearly every word 
that is written upon them. This is because no 
part of the board is smooth and shiny, but 
every part of it is a dull black. 

Some blackboards are all right for a while 
after they have had a coat of dull black paint, 
but after the pupils and teachers have used the 
board for some weeks or months, it slowly be- 
comes smooth and shiny again, so that words or 
drawings placed upon it cannot be seen by 
pupils in some parts of the room. When this 
happens, it is very bad for the eyes, and the 
blackboard should get another coat of paint so 
as to make it all a dull black again. 

Some blackboards are made of glass, the 



THE EYES 87 

surface being made rough by grinding ; some are 
made of large slabs of slate; some of wooden 
boards, or of wall plaster that has been painted 
black. The great thing about any blackboard 
is that it must not be shiny. 

Slate boards and ground-glass boards are ex- 
pensive but last a very long time. Sometimes 
they are smooth and shiny when first put into 
the school, and if they are, they are bad for the 
eyes and should not be kept. Shiny leaves also 
in copy books, reading books, or note books, 
are bad for the eyes, and should not be used. 

You should try to find out how the glass 
over a book-case or over a picture, shines and 
glistens and troubles the eyes. 

Let me give you a hint how to find out. 
Stand before the glass of a book-case, or picture, 
and see whether you can notice the image of a 
window of the room reflected from the glass, 
just as you have often seen your own face 
reflected in a mirror. If you notice this, you 
have found out how a well-worn blackboard 
shines and glistens, and why it is hard to see 
the words that are written upon it. The light 
coming from some window in the room falls 



88 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 21 . — Wrong position of a person reading at a window. 

upon the blackboard, and then glances back to 
your eyes, so as to prevent you from seeing 
clearly. 

In some very badly planned school-houses, 
the children are seated so as to face one or more 
windows. The light, therefore, falls straight 
upon the eyes and hurts them. It is not so bad 
when the windows are placed on both sides of 
the room, though this is bad enough; but the 
best source of light is from ceiling windows 
and from those on the left side of pupils, 30 that 



THE EYES 



89 




FlGUBfl 22. — Right position of a person reading at a window. 



no shadow may fall upon books or papers lying 
on the desk. 

And now I want to tell you about another 
thing that is bad for the eyes. It is bad to read 
a book with small, dim print; and it is bad for 
children to road even large print, if they are 
kept at it for too long a time. Physicians tell 
us that when boys and girls are kept looking at 

but objects, like books, slates, copy books, or 
sewing cards, all day in school, their eyes be- 
come tired and strained. 



90 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

They should, therefore, be rested every now 
and again by looking at distant objects. Even 
a look across the room at a map or picture on 
the wall, for half-a-minute or so, is restful. But 
looking at objects within three feet of us for 
some length of time is tiresome to the eyes, and 
if kept up daily for months or years, will strain 
the eyes and produce headache. 

A number of years ago, a little girl in one of 
our public schools was troubled very much with 
headaches. Her father took her to the family 
doctor. After treating her for some time, the 
doctor began to suspect that the trouble lay in 
the child's eyes. He, therefore, advised that the 
child should be examined by an eye-specialist; 
that is, by a doctor who knows a great deal 
about the eyes. The specialist fitted her eyes 
with glasses which, in a short time, stopped the 
headaches altogether. 

One day, a year or two afterwards, one of the 
lenses fell out of its frame while the child was 
playing. To have the glass put in again, it was 
taken to a local jeweller, who, not knowing 
much about eyeglasses, replaced the lens in its 
frame with the front side towards the back. 



THE EYES 



91 




Figure 23. — Wrong position of a person reading at a lamp. 



Soon the headaches returned as bad as ever, and 
the girl had to be taken a second time to the 
specialist. A brief test of the glasses soon 
revealed the mistake of the jeweller, and on 
putting the glass into the frame properly, the 
headaches soon disappeared again. 

One other thing I wish to tell you about. 
When boys and girls study their lessons at home 
they have often to do so by lamplight. And 
very few of them know how to do this kind of 
work without hurting their eyes. 

They often sit on a chair at the side of the 
table and face a lamp without any shade on it. 



92 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 24. — Right position of a person reading at a lamp. 

This is quite wrong. If a book is too heavy to 
hold in the hands, you must place it on the table, 
of course; but in this case you should always 
place a shade upon the lamp, so that the light 
will fall upon the page and not upon your eyes. 
If the book is small and not heavy, you should 
turn your back to the lamp and get the light to 
fall straight upon the page. If you are reading 
in a room in daytime, you should follow the 
same rule: sit with your back partly turned to 
the window so that the light falls on the book 
over your shoulder. 



THE WORK OF THE BLOOD 93 

QUESTIONS 

1. Why is it difficult to aee objects under water? How is it that 
we cannot see clearly what is written on some blackboards? What 
is the chief thing in a good blackboard? Is the one in your school- 
room shiny? 

J. How many windows are there in your schoolroom? How 
does the light fall on the desk at which you study in school? How 
does it fall upon the table at which you study at home? Do you 
use a lamp shade? 

3. The type, the length of line, and the space between the lines 
in this book (not in these questions) are about right for your eyes. 
Compare them with others in books that you use and see w r hich is 
more easily read. 

4. In what different ways can you rest your eyes, w T hen they are 
tired? How do our eyes get tired? 

5. How is the eye protected from a side blow with a stick? How 
may an eye get injured by a toy pistol? From a firecracker? From 
a careless use of scissors? Or, from using a table-fork to untie the 
knot in a shoe-lace? 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE WORK OF THE BLOOD 

You already know a great deal about your 
body which, as a whole, is a most wonderful 

machine. 

It is covered witli tough skin which protects 
the flesh, bones, nerves and muscles. In your 
skull you have a brain ; and, running down from 
the brain, and protected by the backbone, you 



94 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

have a spinal cord somewhat of the same nature 
as the brain. Both brain and cord send out 
nerve threads to, and receive nerve threads from, 
every other part of the body. Within the chest 
lie the heart and lungs ; within the abdomen are 
the stomach, liver, and intestines. 

The heart pumps the blood up to the head, 
down into the hands and feet, round and round 
the body without ever stopping once as long as 
we live. While the blood is thus circling round 
and round through the body, it is always carry- 
ing on two great kinds of work. In the first 
place, it sucks the nourishment out of the food 
which we eat, and carries this nourishment all 
over the body in a most wonderful set of blood 
tubes. In this way, the skin, bones, nerves, 
muscles and flesh of all kinds are kept well 
nourished. 

In the second place, the blood gathers up from 
every corner of the body the waste matter which 
is always being formed, and carries this waste 
partly to the lungs as impure air, partly to the 
skin as sweat, and partly to other organs, where 
it is got rid of. The blood is thus a most wonder- 
ful mixture of different kinds of stuff. All the 



THE WORK OF THE BLOOD 



95 



good from our food goes into it; all the dead 
waste from the flesh goes into it; so that it is 
never exactly the same for any length of time. 

Most of you know that the pinkish or reddish 
color of the skin is due to the red blood beneath ; 
but only some of you have 
noticed that the flesh is 
red. If you have not, just 
place your fingers between 
your eyes and a lamp flame. 
Or, look at the sun through 
your fingers. When you do 
this, you can see the sepa- 
rate bones of the fingers, 
and between them, the 
bright red flesh. 

The flesh is not all of the 
same color. Look at the 
flesh between one joint of a 
finger and the next joint, and then say whether 
the flesh in this place is the same, or a dif- 
ferent color from that along the side of the 
bones where there is no joint. You see it is a 
brighter red between one finger and the next 
one, because there is more blood there. 




Figure 25. — From an X-ray 
photograph of the bones of 
hand and wrist. 



96 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

The joints are tied together by tough stringy 
bands or ligaments, and these bands as well as 
the bones have less blood in them than the soft 
flesh, and are therefore not so reddish. 

It is very important to know that the flesh 
in every part of your body is crammed full of 
blood, running in a net-work of fine tubes called 
capillaries. Some of these tubes are so small 
that you cannot see them, unless you look at 
them with a powerful magnifying glass. Other 
tubes are large enough to be easily seen with 
the naked eye, and the largest one in your body 
is about as wide across as your thumb. 

The tubes which carry the blood from the 
heart to the outermost parts of the body are 
called arteries, while those that carry the blood 
back again to the heart are called veins. The 
capillaries convey the blood from the ends of 
the arteries to the beginnings of the veins. 

The blood in the arteries is not the same 
color as that in the veins. That in the arteries 
is a bright red and is known as arterial blood; 
while that in the veins is a dark red and is 
known as venous blood. 

If you will look at the diagram of the circula- 



THE WORK OF THE BLOOD 97 

tion of the blood on the next page, it will help 
you to understand where the change in color 
takes place. The heavy black lines denote the 
arteries, the dotted ones denote the veins. 
Notice that one change in color is represented 
as taking place in the lungs, the venous blood 
changing to arterial blood. A second change is 
represented as taking place in the fine blood 
tubes of the flesh. Here the arterial blood 
changes back again to venous blood. 

The cause of this change in color is easily 
understood. While the blood is passing through 
the lungs, it gives up a poisonous gas, called 
carbon dioxide which it has gathered from all 
over the body. At the same time it takes up 
a load of oxygen from the air sacs of the lungs. 
In doing this it changes from a dark red to a 
bright red. 

As this bright red blood passes through the 
flesh in the fine blood tubes of which I have 
spoken, it changes to a dark red through losing 
much of its oxygen and taking up carbon diox- 
ide. In other words, the very opposite change 
takes place in the flesh from that which takes 
place in the lungs. 



98 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




RIGHT CAROTID. 
WGHTSUBCIAV1AN ARTEM£ 

RIGHTBUBCLAVIAN'*? 1 
VEIN. 



RlOHTMALF.Vff/ 

OF THE HEART J," 
'CONTAINING |Jj. 
VENOUS 8 WOO •"< 



XEFT CAROTID ARTERY^ 
-LEFT JUGULAR VEIN 
^>^LEFT SUBCLAVIAN ARTERY 
i£^U.EFT SUBCLAVIAN VEIN 

LEFT HALF OF HEART 
CONTAINING ARTERIAL 
BLOOD 

^-DESCENDING AORTA 

ASCENDING VENA CAVA 
KIDNEY 




Figure 26.— Diagram of the Circulation of the Blood, 



THE WORE OF THE BLOOD 99 

Cf these two changes, the one that takes place 
in the lungs is the most important, because it is 
the one over which you have most control. If 
you have learned to breathe properly by expand- 
ing the chest, and sitting or standing up straight, 
then the lungs will take in plenty of air, and the 
blood will get all the more oxygen and be able 
to give it to the muscles, nerves and other organs 
of the body. 

But, if you sit with rounded shoulders and 
hollow narrow chest, you will not be able to 
breathe properly, and you may be quite sure 
that, if the seeds of consumption lodge in your 
lungs, you will be much more likely to take this 
disease and perhaps die from it. 

You see, therefore, that it is not enough to 
breathe fresh air, you must learn to breathe 
properly, that is, you must expand your chest so 
that the fresh air may pass into every nook and 
corner of the lungs. 

As I have just hinted, it is necessary that 
the blood should get rid of the waste, or poison, 
which it gathers up from the flesh. If the 
carbon dioxide which is part of this poison were 
not passed out of the body almost every second, 



100 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

by means of the lungs, we could not live for ten 
minutes. If more of the poison were not thrust 
out by means of the skin and kidneys, we could 
not live over two or three days. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Point out the position of the heart in your body, and tell what 
its work is. What is the name of the tubes in which the blood is 
carried away from the heart? In which the blood is carried back 
again? 

2. How do you know that flesh is reddish in color? What gives 
the flesh this color? 

3. What gas does blood get from the lungs? What gas does it 
give off to the lungs? 

4. What does blood do with other waste matter which it gathers 
up from the body? What organs of the body take this waste from 
the blood? 

5. At what two parts of the body does blood change from a dark 
red to a bright red and vice versa? Why should a person be particu- 
lar to breathe properly? 



TOBACCO AND THE BLOOD 101 



CHAPTER XIV 

TOBACCO AND THE BLOOD 

If you will hunt up the word nicotine in a 
good dictionary, you will find that this sub- 
stance is described as an oily, colorless liquid, 
with a burning taste and disagreeable smell. It 
is very poisonous. 

Haberman, a German scientist, studied the 
effects of this substance very carefully. He 
found out how much of it w T as in a cigar. You 
know that before lighting a cigar, it is usual to 
cut off a small piece from the end which is 
placed in the mouth. Such short pieces, Haber- 
man found, contain about 3| per cent, of the 
nicotine which is in the whole cigar. (Ask your 
teacher to explain what per cent, means.) 

Then there is the part which is smoked; that 
is, partly turned into ashes, the smoke being 
drawn into the mouth. In this part, Haberman 
found 60 per cent, of the nicotine. More than 

quarter of this amount passes through the 
lining of the mouth and enters the blood. 

Lastly, (here i> the unsmoked part; that is, 



102 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

the part which is in the mouth, and which 
becomes too hot to burn up to the lips. This 
contains 36 per cent, of the nicotine. 

You will notice that this part contains more 
than its due share of the poison. Why? Clearly, 
it is because some of the nicotine from the far 
end, and from the middle of the cigar, collects 
at the end next the mouth, as the burning goes 
on. It is for this reason, that careful smokers 
throw away — not a short part of the cigar — but 
often as much as half of it. In this way, they 
do not take so much of the nicotine into their 
blood, and they do not get its bitter, burning 
taste. 

When nicotine thus enters the blood, it slows 
down the rate and lessens the strength of the 
heart beat, and when heavy smoking has been 
indulged in for years, it sometimes brings on a 
disease that is called "Tobacco heart. " It also 
produces a disease of the throat known as 
" Smoker's sore throat. " But, of course, many 
moderate smokers go through life without get- 
ting either of these diseases. 

In the case of young people, the use of tobacco 
is believed to check the natural and healthy 



TOBACCO AND THE BLOOD 



103 



growth of the body. That tobacco does this is 
very difficult to prove, because, if a boy is under- 
sized, no one can say whether his small size has 
been caused by tobacco or not. He may have 
been born undersized, as many a boy is, and he 
may remain undersized without being a smoker. 
Professor Seaver collected some very inter- 
esting facts about the young men who entered 
Yale University between 
the years 1890 and 1897. 
For example, he found 
out that, on the average, 
those who smoked were 
about fifteen months older, 
on entering, than those 
who did not smoke; that 
they were not able to 
take as much air into 
their lungs at a breath 




by about five cubic inches: Figure 27.— Both bo y3 are of 

the sameage. Tobacco smok- 
ing has not made the differ- 
ence in their size. 

and that onlv five 



that they were not so tall; 

per 

cent, of them gained the highest rank in their 
studies. 

In other words, the students who did not 



104 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

smoke were able to enter college at an earlier 
age; they were taller; they had a larger meas- 
urement round the chest; and more of them 
took higher rank in their studies than did those 
who smoked. 

These are very striking facts. Do they not 
show you young people, that if you wish to 
have strong, healthy bodies, and clear, vigorous 
minds, you will avoid the use of tobacco alto- 
gether. 

Thoughtful men always consider it wise to 
learn everything they can from others. Why 
should boys not do the same thing? Not merely 
should you learn what you can about the effects 
of tobacco from those who are wiser than your- 
selves in this country; but you should, if possi- 
ble, take a wider view still, and try to find out 
how wise men in other countries look upon the 
tobacco habit. 

Now there is always one way in which we 
may learn what any great nation thinks on any 
great subject, and that is by reading the laws 
which are passed by its parliament. What then 
does Germany think about boys smoking? She 
gays that no boy under sixteen years of age 



TOBACCO AND THE BLOOD 105 

shall smoke, and Japan says that no young 
person under twenty years of age shall smoke. 
Ask your teacher, if you do not already know, 
what the laws in your State say on this impor- 
tant subject. 

There is no doubt that cigarette smoking 
lowers one's power of doing bodily labor or 
playing games like football, hockey, or baseball. 
For this reason, the captain of an athletic club 
will not allow any of his men who are to play 
the season's matches, to smoke tobacco or to 
drink liquors containing alcohol. If he does so, 
he knows very well that his team runs the risk 
of being beaten. 

Tobacco does not injure men over twenty-five 
so much as it does younger people. I mean that 
the effect on the mind is not so marked in the 
one case as in the other. For one thing, tobacco 
cannot stunt the growth of young men at 
twenty-five, for they are already full grown. 
But, in the case of lads of fifteen or eighteen 
years of age, going into a business, where quick- 
ness, accuracy, steadiness, patience, and other 
good qualities are required, tobacco smoking, 
and especially cigarette smoking, is i\ decided 



106 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

drawback. Business men tell me that boys 
who have acquired the cigarette habit are not 
so reliable, nor so quick, nor so painstaking as 
those who do not smoke. For this reason, some 
employers will not engage a clerk if he is known 
to be a user of tobacco. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What is the effect of tobacco smoking upon boys, the first 
time it is tried? 

2. How much nicotine did Haberman find in each of the three 
parts of a cigar? What is the objection to smoking a cigarette or 
cigar up to the very end? Spanish smokers generally throw away 
half of each cigar. Why? 

3. What is the effect of nicotine on the heart? What is " smoker's 
sore throat"? Can it be proved that the use of tobacco stunts the 
growth of boys? Why not? 

4. Why are athletes forbidden to smoke? Why do some business 
men decline to employ boys who smoke cigarettes? 



FOOD 107 



CHAPTER XV 

FOOD 

The blood sucks up all the good it can get 
from our food. Indeed I might almost say that 
the food first becomes blood, and that the blood 
afterwards becomes flesh. 

If this be true — and there is no doubt about 
it — then we ought to be careful to eat nothing 
but good foods; because good foods, when 
eaten by healthy boys and girls, will make good 
blood, and good blood will make stout, sinewy 
bodies. On the other hand, poor food or ill- 
digested food will mean poor blood and puny, 
stunted bodies. 

I wonder how many of you have noticed how 
green the grass looks on a lawn and how well 
the crops look on a farm when there has been 
plenty of rain. How many of you, during a dry 
-on, have seen the grass turn brown very 
early, and the crops turn out short in the stalk, 
and the yield of grain scanty? 

Do you suppose the difference is caused by 
the plants being well fed in a rainy season and 



108 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

poorly fed in a dry season? When rain is plenti- 
ful, the roots of plants can suck up plenty of 
food from the soil; when rain is scarce, they 
cannot do so and they are thus partly starved. 
The rain makes all the difference in the world. 

Of course, some soils are so poor that they 
contain little or no food for plants ; for example, 
soil that is composed of pure sand. No amount 
of rain will make grass grow upon a sandy 
desert. But, if the soil is good, the amount of 
food which a plant can get will depend upon the 
rainfall. In other words, plants may be starved 
either because there is no food in the soil, or 
because there has been no rain. 

When the soil is rich in food and there is 
plenty of moisture, then plants grow best. Illus- 
trations of this may be seen on any farm on 
which there are different kinds of soil. Trees 
as well as grass and grain vary in growth with 
variations in soil and moisture. 

A double row of maples planted over fifty 
years ago, illustrates well how plenty of plant- 
food and moisture act upon the growth of trees. 
If you look at the picture of these, you will see 
that the trees about the middle of the row are 



FOOD 



109 




Figure 28. — Avenue of trees all planted at the same time. Winter scene. 

taller and have bigger trunks, than those at 
each end of the avenue. All the trees got ex- 
actly the same amount of rain and sunshine; 
the soil was, at the time the trees were planted, 
exactly the same over the whole length of the 
street. 

What then caused the difference in growth? 
Briefly, it was caused by the fact that the middle 
trees got most food. There was low-lying 
ground about the central parts of the avenue, 
u\\(\ for many years the street scrapings were 
carted to this part, to bring if up to the level of 



110 HYGIENE FOE YOUNG PEOPLE 

the rest of the avenue. These scrapings were 
rich in plant food. 

Moreover, there was a soakage of the rainfall 
from the higher areas of the park towards this 
low-lying part of the avenue, and the two things 
— the more abundant food supply, and the 
greater moisture — combined to make the middle 
trees grow larger than the end ones. In order, 
therefore, that young trees or young plants of 
any kind may grow into strong, healthy, big 
ones, they must get plenty of plant food and 
plenty of moisture. 

In a similar way, young animals can grow into 
strong big ones only by being well fed. Every 
good farmer knows this. I once knew two men 
who lived on adjoining farms. The one was a 
good farmer, the other, a very poor one. They 
each had some well-bred calves. During the 
spring and early summer, one fed his calves 
on plenty of fresh milk; later on, he mixed 
oatmeal with their milk, and gave them all the 
green grass they could eat. 

The other fed his calves on skimmed milk, and 
allowed them to run in the common pasture. 
Before the summer was over, anyone could see a 



FOOD 111 

marked difference in the two sets of calves. 
The better fed were longer, taller, heavier, and 
better-looking than the other; they took the 
prize at the county fair, and sold for a higher 
price. 

And the sad thing about the whole matter 
was that the poor farmer did not know how 
there had come to be such a difference between 
his calves and his neighbor's. He did not see 
that his animals were shorter, lighter, and skin- 
nier, just because he had ill-fed or under-fed 
them all summer. 

And I am afraid that many fathers and 
mothers half starve their children. I don't 
mean that any parents are so wicked as to 
actually refuse to give their children enough 
food; they simply do not know how to feed 
their boys and girls. A few parents may be so 
very poor in some of our large cities that they 
cannot buy enough good food for their children. 
But, in many cases, when children are thin and 
pale and too small for their age, they have 
become so, because the blood could not suck 
enough nourishment out of the poor food that 
wae given to the children. 



112 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

Because, as you already know, good blood can 
come only from good food, and good blood alone 
can make strong, sturdy bodies. Poor blood 
will come from poor food, and poor blood can 
make only poor flesh, poor muscles, poor brains, 
and poor everything in us. 

Again, it often happens that food is good 
enough of its kind; but, if it is always of one 
kind, it may not contain enough nourishment to 
keep us alive. For, we must eat different kinds 
of food in order to have healthy blood. You 
know that dogs are fond of meat. But dogs 
have been starved to death on food that was 
nothing but pure fat. And human beings also 
would soon starve to death on a diet of pure 
sugar, pure starch, or pure fat. 

What then is good food? In answer, it may 
be said that good food is a mixture of a number 
of different things. You will understand best 
what is meant if I talk to you for a little while 
about milk. 

Milk is the food of many young animals, and 
it is the food which we all took when we were 
babes. It is sometimes the only food which 
people can take when they are very sick. So, 



FOOD 113 

pure milk must be a good food. It is, in fact, 
the best of all foods for young children. If we 
can only find out, therefore, what the different 
things are which are contained in milk, we shall 
have taken a long step towards finding out what 
good food is. 

Then there is another good thing about milk. 
It is easily digested, if only it is drunk in 
the right way; and the right way is to sip it. 
Some people drink a glass or two of milk all at 
once. This is quite wrong; because, all our food 
should be mixed with saliva before being swal- 
lowed. 

Saliva is the juice which comes into the 
mouth when we chew anything. The drier 
our food, the more saliva is formed. It acts 
upon our food in such a way as to prepare it 
for passing through the walls of the intestine 
and getting into the blood; and of course the 
saliva lias no chance to do this, if food is swal- 
lowed as soon as it enters the mouth. 

The proper way, then, to take milk is to sip 
it : thai is, to take it in small mouthfuls mid 
allow it to remain two or three seconds in the 
mouth. In this way it becomes mixed with 



114 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

saliva, and is, therefore, more quickly digested 
when it reaches the stomach. 

If a person is weak and sickly, the milk ought 
to be warmed — not boiled — before being drunk, 
because warm milk digests faster than cold milk. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Why do farmers look anxiously for rain in a dry season? Is 
the rain one of the foodstuffs of plants? What proof have you seen 
that well-fed trees grow bigger than poorly-fed ones? 

2. What proof have you seen that well-fed animals grow larger 
than poorly-fed ones? What reason is there for believing that 
well-fed children grow bigger and stronger than ill-fed ones? 

3. What other causes besides lack of food may produce stunted 
children? Name three foods which if alone fed to a man would not 
keep him alive. 

4. Why is milk called a perfect food? How should it be drunk? 
Why? Why should it be warmed before being given to a sick or 
delicate person? 



WHAT MILK CONTAINS 115 



CHAPTER XVI 

WHAT MILK CONTAINS 

To begin with, milk contains five different 
things. You all know two of these already, 
water and cream. And some of you who have 
been in a cheese factory will know of a third 
thing that is present in milk, namely, curd. In 
making cheese, there is added to warm milk a 
substance called rennet, which is prepared from 
the lining of a calf's stomach, and which turns 
warm milk into a soft jelly-like mass, called 
curds, and a liquid called whey. When a calf 
has sucked its mother, the milk turns into 
curds and whey in its stomach. The same 
change takes place in the stomach of a child. 

But milk contains two other things besides 
curds, cream, and water. It contains a little 
sugar and a little salt. And these are the five 
things which all good foods should contain. 
They are not always called curds, cream, sugar, 
water, and salt. We give them other names 
when they are found in meat or bread or vege- 
tables; but the important thing to know is thai 



116 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

every article of food should contain more or less 
of these five things. 

They are present in pure milk in just about 
the right amounts to make good flesh and blood 
in young children. But, in many other kinds 
of food, for example, meat, they are not present 
in the best proportions to make good blood. 
Meat contains a great deal more of the curdy 
matter, and, if it is very fat meat, it contains a 
great deal more of the creamy matter or fat 
and not enough of the sugar or salt; but no 
matter what article of food you think of, it 
contains one or more of these five different 
things, and all of them are necessary for making 
good blood. 

Now, in order that you may have clear ideas 
about milk, let me give you, as nearly as pos- 
sible, the exact amounts of the five substances 
that are present in 100 parts of the milk from 
a fairly good cow : 

i. Curd 3J parts. 

ii. Cream, or butter fat . . . 3| 

in. Milk Sugar 5 " 

iv. Salts of different kinds f 



v. Water 87 



iC 



WHAT MILK CONTAINS 117 

These five things make up the food of every 
person. The gentleman with his many courses 
of food at dinner, and the beggar with his wallet 
of bread and cheese and his cup of water, both 
make their meal out of these five things. 

Man, everywhere, civilized or savage, white or 
black, does the same. To make good blood you 
must eat some of these five kinds of food. You 
could live only a short time on fats alone, or on 
sugar alone. You could live for a long time on 
curds, salt, and water; but you would not be in 
very good health. You would very likely grow 
sick after some time and you would probably 
die. You must have some of each of these five 
kinds of food. Not too much of any one of them 
and not too little, but just enough of each to 
make the good blood which alone can give 
health and strength. 

Xow I am sure, that some of you wish to 
know what is the proper amount of each of 
these things which should be taken as food. 
And I must tell you that this is a very hard 
question to answer. 

Not all of us require exactly the same amount 
of each. Some people require more of our 



118 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

thing, and some require more of another, ac- 
cording to the kind of work that they do, and 
the season of the year, or the part of the world 
they live in. You will be told about this when 
you reach a higher class in school. Meantime, 
the important thing for you to remember in 
this lesson is that, if you would grow strong, 
and remain strong men and women, you must 
eat food that contains curds, butter or fats, 
sugar, salt, and water, in about the following 
proportions : 

1. Curdy matter, generally called proteids, 
and found in milk, eggs, lean meat, fish, also 
in considerable quantities in peas and beans, 
about 2 to 3^ oz. daily. 

2. Fats, as in milk (butter), fat of meat, cod- 
liver oil, olive oil, lard, about 3^ oz. daily. 

3. Starches, sugars, gums, jellies. Found 
chiefly in potatoes, cereals, beets, fruits and 
vegetables. The first two of these are generally 
called carbo-hydrates, and you need from 9 to 
12 oz. daily. 

4. Salts. Found in all foods. In addition to 
what is in our food we take table salt; in all 
about 1 oz. 



WHAT MILK CONTAINS 119 

5. Water makes up a large part of all our 
foods; but in addition to what is in the food 
itself, we must drink water, tea, or coffee so as 
to take, in all, about 90 fluid ounces, or over two 
quarts per day. 

When people are young and strong, they pay 
little or no special attention to the choice or to 
the cooking of their food; but, if they and their 
parents disregard all care in its selection and 
preparation, they are likely to pay the penalty of 
their carelessness or ignorance later on in life. 

The following table shows the proportions of 
proteids, fats, carbo-hydrates, salts, and water 
which are present in most of our common arti- 
cles of food. The pupil should compare each 
of them with the standard diet given above, 
and see what each article lacks in order to 
supply the proper amount of each food-stuff 
required by the body : 



120 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



COMPOSITION OF FOOD MATERIALS— (A twater) 

Nutrients. 



Proteids. Fats. 



Carbo- Mineral Water. Refuse, 
hydrates. Matters. 



.yutrients.etcp.c 



10 20 30 >4Q 50 60 70 80 80 lJBI 




'Without bone. 
Figure 29. — Composition of Food Materials. 



DIGESTION 121 

QUESTIONS 

1. Write down from memory the composition of good milk. 
Which of the five things present in milk will also be present in 
cheese? 

2. How is it that the Esquimaux eat such large quantities of fat; 
whereas people in hot countries eat chiefly fruits and vegetables? 

3. How is it that some people need to pay but little attention to 
the choice of their food, or to the cooking of it? Will a man who 
sits and writes all day require as much food as a laborer? Give a 
reason for your answer. 

4. In planning a meal, how may the lack of carbo-hydrates in 
beefsteak be remedied? What other food should be eaten with 
bread and water in order to make a proper meal? Why? 



CHAPTER XVII 

DIGESTION 

"Will it make any difference/' you ask, "what 
kind of food we eat, so long as it contains the 
right quantities of curds, fats and starches or 
sugar ?" Yes, it will make a great deal of 
difference, especially if your digestion is not 
good. In this case you must be doubly careful 
to select foods that are easily digested. The 
choice of food, the cooking of food, and the 
chewing of food are, to some extent, in your 
own keeping, and you can either care for your 
digestion, or ruin it just as you choose. 



122 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

Not all foods are equally digestible. Some 
are hard to digest; some are easy. Some that 
are hard to digest when raw, are easily digested 
when properly cooked. Some that are easily 
digested when raw can be made hard to digest 
when badly cooked. For example, raw eggs 
are very digestible, even by delicate stomachs; 
but if fried or boiled hard, they become more 
difficult of digestion. 

Next to selecting easily digestible foods, it is 
important to eat each meal slowly and to chew 
the food very thoroughly. The chewing of the 
food is in fact the only part of the act of diges- 
tion which you can fully control. Once you 
have swallowed your food its digestion is beyond 
your control. 

Digestion takes place partly in the mouth, 
partly in the stomach, and partly in the intes- 
tines. We may, therefore, speak of mouth di- 
gestion, stomach digestion, and intestinal di- 
gestion. 

It would be an easy matter to tell you about 
some of the changes which food undergoes in 
the stomach and in the intestine; but it would 
not be profitable to do so at this time. Even if 



DIGESTION 



123 



you knew something about these changes and 
had a severe attack of indigestion, you could do 
nothing for your- 
self. You would 
have to go to a 
good doctor for 
treatment and 
trust to him to 
cure you. 

But you can do 
a great deal to 
avoid stomach and 
intestinal indiges- 
tion, if you avoid 
the use of alcohol 
and tobacco, chew 
every bite of food 
twenty or thirty 
times before swal- 
lowing it, and 
avoid overstrain and worry. These things, at 
least, are within your control. 

Some of you are no doubt saying to your- 
selves, "Whal you toll us may be all very true; 
but we have often to hurry at breakfast to get 




Figure 30. — Diagram of the food tube, or in- 
•:no. 1 and 2, salivary glands; 3, gullet; 
4, stomach; 5, 5, liver; 6, *'•. the small intes- 
tine; 7, 7, 7, large intestine, or lower bowel. 



124 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

to school in time, and our fathers and brothers 
have to hurry to reach their work on time. 
How, then, can we eat breakfast slowly ?" 

"Then, too, at noon," you tell me, " there is 
the same hurry — hurry home, for the walk is 
long, and hurry back to work, for the noon 
recess is short. Our fathers, brothers and sis- 
ters, too, who are in shops or factories or in the 
harvest field, must hurry at noon both coming 
and going." 

All of this, I have no doubt, is very true; 
but all very wrong. As I have already pointed 
out to you in other matters, you may commit 
wrongs against your stomach for months; 
sometimes, if you are very strong, for years; 
but sooner or later you will suffer for it. The 
hurried meal and the hurried walk to work are 
the sure forerunners of the pain, discomfort, 
and weakness which you will suffer later in life. 

The right time for young people to begin to 
form good habits is now ; and I know of nothing 
which will help you more to keep well than 
forming good regular bodily habits. There 
should be regular hours for eating, drinking and 
for the movement of the bowels. 



DIGESTION 125 

Suppose you begin with eating. Form the 
habit of taking at least half-an-hour to a meal, 
and chewing every bite until it is almost nothing 
but pure liquid. This will allow the saliva to 
mix thoroughly with the food, and, as soon as 
this has been done, the process of digestion is 
well begun. When you swallow the food that 
has been thus thoroughly chewed, the changes 
in the food produced by the saliva still go on in 
the stomach for over half-an-hour. 

Moreover, the thorough grinding of the food 
under the teeth reduces it to very small pieces, 
and this enables the juices of the stomach and 
of the intestines to digest the food more thor- 
oughly and quickly than they could if the food 
had been swallowed in lumps. 

Another rule that must be kept in mind is 
this: while chewing the food, one should not 
drink large quantities of water, tea, or other 
liquid; because doing so dilutes the saliva, and 
weakens its action on the food. Try to drink 
the liquid you need in the interval between 
meal and the next. 

Then, too, meals should be taken at regular 
intervals during the day. Breakfast at or 10 



126 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

o'clock, dinner at 1, and tea at 6, are not the 
hours of the day for meals. They should be 
eaten at least five or six hours apart, and there 
should be no eating between meals; because 
the stomach needs rest for the same reason that 
your muscles do. 

At the table, while taking meals, not a word 
should be said about worries and anxieties; 
because these interfere with digestion; they 
should be forgotten if possible for the time 
being. Rather should you pass part of the time 
in telling good stories, or in pleasant conversa- 
tion. " Laugh and grow fat" is a very old and 
true saying. 

People who are delicate should never eat when 
tired. They should lie down for half-an-hour 
before meals. Moreover, in their case, it is a 
good plan to eat only a little at a time and to 
eat oftener than three times a day. Those who 
have hard bodily labor to do and those who 
are recovering from severe illness may, if their 
digestion is good, be allowed four or even five 
meals a day. 



A ROMAN WINE FARM 127 

QUESTIONS 

1. Name some kinds of food that when badly cooked become 
harder than when they are raw. Name some vegetables that are 
softened by boiling. Should good cooking make food harder to 
digest, or easier? 

2. (live two or three reasons, if you can, why food should be m I 
chewed before it is swallowed. What parts of the act of digestion 
can we control? 

3. What objection is there to eating in a hurry? How long 
should we spend at a meal? How long should we rest after a meal? 
Why? 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A ROMAN WINE FARM 

Is there any food in wine or in alcohol? Xo 
doubt the juice of the grape contains some valu- 
able foodstuffs, just as the grapes themselves 
do; but after the juice has fermented by stand- 
ing in the air, the juice changes very much, and 
comes, in reality, to contain much less nourish- 
ment than it did at first. How does this change 
take place? 

Thanks to excavations that have been made in 
the neighborhood of Pompeii and to accounts 
that have come down to us from Roman writers, 
we know pretty well how wine was made in 
Italy about the beginning of the Christian era. 



128 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




lilt aKgsagftiA»iMi 



■ Bed 

R 



C&urt 



k 




Figure 31. — Ground plan of a Roman farmhouse. 

A well-preserved Roman farmhouse about 
seven miles south-east from Mount Vesuvius, 
has recently been unearthed and you may gain 
a very good idea of its various parts by looking 
at its ground plan. The building, which was 
about 130 feet long by 82 feet wide, was over- 
whelmed with pumice stone and dust at the 
same time as the city of Pompeii, in the year 79. 

As can be seen from the plan, there was only 
one entrance but this was large enough to admit 
a span of horses abreast. The stable was en- 
tered through the kitchen. The court was open 
to the sky. So was the fermentation court, a 
fact which must be remembered when we con- 



A ROMAN WINE FARM 129 

sider that hero fermentation of the grape juice 
took place. 

The circles in the two rooms denote the large 
vats or tubs in which the wine was fermented. 
The farm must have grown large quantities of 
grapes; because the vats were altogether capa- 
ble of holding between 600 and 700 barrels of 
wine. Moreover, the owner of the farm must 
have been wealthy; because, lying in one of the 
largest vats and covered with its lid, were 
found several bags of jewelry, gold and silver 
coins, and richly embossed silver cups. The 
latter were evidently used in drinking the wine. 

From these sources we learn that the ripe 
grapes were first placed upon an elevated plat- 
form. Over the grapes were placed boards, and 
the juice was pressed out by a heavy beam 
brought down upon them from above. The 
platform was a sloping one, so that the juice 
could be conveyed away through tubes or 
troughs to vats in the corridor, but chiefly to 
those in the fermentation court. 

Freshly pressed juice is sweet ; that is, it con- 
tain.- sugar, but it does not contain any alcohol, 
i»r spirits of wine, It is, therefore, not intoxi- 



130 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

eating, and is usually spoken of as the unfer- 
mented juice of the grape. 

But this juice, on standing exposed to air, 
soon undergoes a marvellous change. In the 
course of days or weeks, large bubbles form on 
its surface, its color changes, it loses its sweet 
taste, and it is found to contain alcohol. In 
addition, vinegar often forms in it, and then, of 
course, the wine tastes sour. 

Whence has the alcohol come, and whence the 
vinegar? 

If you will read over again the chapter on 
Pasteur's experiments with air, you may make 
a pretty close guess as to what takes place. 
Germs of different kinds fall into the juice from 
the air and start to grow. In the very act of 
growing, they set up changes in the sugar 
which is present in all grape juice. One of 
these changes is seen in the bubbles of gas, and 
other changes are seen in the formation of 
alcohol and of vinegar. 

While the ancient Hebrews, Greeks and 
Romans all knew of the change of grape juice 
into wine, they were quite ignorant of the cause 
of the change. In fact, it was not until between 



A ROMAN WINE FARM 131 

1856 and 1S60 that fermentation, as it is called, 
began to be understood. Pasteur proved that 
it was due to the growth of a very tiny plant, 
the yeast plant, the germs of which are often 
present in the air. Not merely so, but he found 
that when the wine turns sour, the souring is 
due to another tiny plant, the vinegar plant, 
which grows in the fermenting juice along with 
the yeast plant. 

In fermentation, the yeast plant turns the 
sugar into alcohol and into the gas which is 
contained in the bubbles. The more sugar there 
is in the juice, the more alcohol can be made 
from it; and the less sugar, the less alcohol. 
The same is true of the sugars which ferment 
and form ale and cider. 

Even in very early times, a further change was 
made in the fermented juice. After the fermen- 
tation had ceased, the alcohol was separated 
from the rest of the juice. This was done by 
means of a still. The fermented juice from 
grapes, apples, corn, or barley is placed in the 
part A, and heated over a fire in I); the alcohol 
comes away from it in the form of a fine mist or 
vapor, and, in the coil B, which is surrounded 



132 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 32. — Distilling Apparatus. 



with water to cool the vapor, it is turned into 
a liquid and drops out into a vessel C. 

This alcohol is very strong, that is, it contains 
much less water than the alcohol that is in wine. 

Liquors made in this way are called distilled 
liquors and include rum, brandy, gin, and 
whiskey. I suppose that this separation was 
first made by those who were fond of strong 
alcohol and were not satisfied with the smaller 
quantity that is present in wines. At any rate, 
it is a well-known fact that people usually 
acquire the alcohol habit by first drinking the 
weaker fermented liquors, like ale or wine; but 






A ROMAN WINE FARM 133 

in the end they drink the strongest distilled 
liquors they can get. 

There are from five to ten parts of alcohol in 
every hundred parts of fermented cider. 

In beer, there are from four to six in every 
hundred. 

In wines, the quantity of alcohol varies from 
eight or ten up to seventeen parts per hundred. 

Whiskey, rum, brandy, and gin contain from 
thirty to fifty parts of alcohol in every one 
hundred of the liquor, and consequently produce 
intoxication much more quickly than does beer 
or wine. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Draw from memory the ground plan of a Roman farmhouse. 
Isaiah speaks of "treading the wine press." What is referred to? 
Can you quote a text of Scripture that condemns t lie drinking of 
wine? 

What changes take place in the fermentation of grape juice? 
What is the cause of these changes? Will similar changes take 

place in juice that is squeezed out of apples? 

What further change takes place in fermented grape juice, 

when it is heated in a "Mill"? What names are given to different 
liquors formed in this way? How do these liquors differ from 
fermented on- 

\. How is vinegar formed from wine? Ales and wines Bome- 

become musty, and .-<> disagreeable that they cannot he used. 

May these changes be caused by other germs getting into the liquid 



134 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

from the air, and producing further changes than are produced by 
the yeast plant and vinegar plant? 



CHAPTER XIX 

NARCOTICS 

Tea, coffee, and cocoa are all drunk, chiefly 
because they make people feel better by causing 
the machinery of the body to work faster. For 
this reason, they are spoken of as stimulants. 
Alcohol also seems to be a stimulant when 
taken in small quantities; but in reality it is 
not. It is more like a poison, and the sleep of 
the drunken man is almost exactly like the 
sleep caused by a narcotic poison. 

A narcotic poison is a substance which puts a 
person into a deep sleep. Alcohol, ether, chloro- 
form, opium, and to a less degree, tobacco, all 
belong to this class. Used in small quantities, 
they seem to excite the nerves and stir up 
the machinery of the body like tea and coffee. 
When, however, they are taken in larger quanti- 
ties, they dull the nerves and finally put a man 
into a sleep like that of the drunkard. 

It is not always easy to tell whether a man i§ 



NARCOTICS 135 

in a drunken sleep or in a sleep caused by 
opium. A few years ago, a divinity student in 
one of our American colleges was found about 
10 o'clock at night lying on the street. The 
policeman who found him could not awaken 
him and therefore had him driven to the police 
station. The doctor who was called looked 
carelessly at the sleeping man, and said " Drunk; 
he'll be all right in the morning." 

The policeman, however, could find no smell 
of alcohol from his breath, and telephoned for 
another doctor. This one made a more careful 
examination, and said he thought the sleep was 
due to opium. In the morning, friends of the 
student discovered his whereabouts, and a third 
and still more careful medical examination, 
showed that the man had been stricken down 
with a fit of apoplexy. 

You see, then, that sleep may be caused in 
different ways. The sleep produced by ether, 
chloroform, opium, and strong alcohol are all 
very much alike. In fact, before the days of 
( thor or chloroform, rude surgeons, called bone- 
ters, used to give a man enough alcohol to 
throw him into the dee]) sleep of drunkenness. 



136 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

When in this deep sleep/ a broken bone was set 
or some other operation was carried out on the 
man. 

This, then, is one great difference between 
alcohol on the one hand and tea or coffee on 
the other. The latter, if drunk very strong and 
in large quantity, is very disagreeable. It will 
make us sick, but it will not throw us into a 
deep sleep. No doubt you yourselves know 
some people who take more tea or coffee than is 
good for them. When they do, they become 
nervous, their hands tremble, they do not sleep, 
and they suffer from indigestion ; but, as a rule, 
few people injure themselves by drinking too 
much tea or coffee. In the case of alcohol, it 
is quite different. The drunkard's nerves break 
down, his hands tremble, he gets indigestion, 
and does not sleep well, unless under the in- 
fluence of the alcohol. 

A second marked difference between tea and 
alcohol is that the thirst for the latter becomes 
stronger and stronger, until at last, it is quite 
beyond control. It is strong alcohol only that 
the drunkard wishes, and a small quantity does 
uot satisfy him, If he has the money to pay 



NARCOTICS 137 

for it, he does not cease drinking until he is 
dead drunk. He will sacrifice his wife, children, 
home, honor, and friends in order to get money 
to satisfy this craving. 

This is true of other narcotics also. The 
longer they are used, the stronger becomes the 
craving for them. This is particularly true of 
opium. Those who become slaves to the opium 
habit are known as opium fiends, and in this 
case, just as in the case of drunkards, home, 
honor, friends are all sacrificed to enable them 
to indulge a debasing and deadly habit. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What are narcotic drugs? Mention the names of some. How 
can you sometimes distinguish between the sleep of the drunkard 
and the sleep caused by opium? 

2. What drag was formerly used to produce insensibility to 
pain, before chloroform or ether was discovered? 

3. Point out two or three differences between the effects of tea 
and coffee and those of alcohol. What disease is sometimes caused 
by drinking much strong tea or coffee? 



138 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



CHAPTER XX 

HOW FOOD SPOILS 




fijt'tf 



Figure 33. — Mould from cheese, much magnified. The little round 
knobs contain the tiny seeds, or germs, of the plant. These are 
carried about in the air and when they fall upon bread, cheese, or 
other suitable soil start to. grow. 

A few years ago, two women were overheard 
talking about canning tomatoes. 

One of them told the other how she had 
peeled the tomatoes very carefully, and then 
boiled them for about half-an-hour. After they 
had cooled, she poured them into well-washed 



HOW FOOD SPOILS 139 

glass jars, put on the lids, and screwed them 
down tight. The jars were then carried to the 
cellar and stored for winter use. 

But to her surprise they nearly all went bad. 
After trying to can them in this way for three 
years and finding that only a few of them re- 
mained good, she gave up trying. In looking 
into the jars which had gone bad, she found 
that there was always a whitish scum on the 
top. They smelt musty also when opened, and 
they often tasted quite sour. Sometimes also 
a jar would burst, spilling its contents all over 
the floor. What was the matter? 

The other woman said she had been canning 
tomatoes and different kinds of fruits for many 
years, and rarely did any of her jars go bad. 
She had been careful to wash the fruits and 
tomatoes so as to remove any dust that might 
be clinging to them. She had then boiled them 
for about half-an-hour, and at the end of that 
time had at once poured them into jars which 
had themselves been boiled in water for half- 
an-hour. The covers and rubber rings had also 
been thoroughly cleansed with soap and hot 
water. In fad, she had taken great pains to 



140 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

have everything exceedingly clean, and in 
handling the hot jars and covers she had to 
use towels so as to prevent her hands from being 
burnt. Why did her jars remain good? 

To answer this question , you must remember 
what you have read about Pasteur's experiments 
with soup. 

You remember that when he boiled the soup 
well and took care that no air should get into it, 
the soup remained good for four years. But, 
whenever he allowed the air to enter his flasks — 
no matter how well he had boiled the soup, — it 
went bad. The germs from the air, falling upon 
the soup, started to grow and spoiled it. 

Now, perhaps, you can tell me what mistakes 
were made by the first woman in trying to can 
her tomatoes. Ah! I see you have all dis- 
covered where she went wrong. She was not 
clean enough in her operations, and she should 
have bottled her fruit when it was boiling hot. 

Either the tomatoes were not boiled long 
enough to kill all the microbes which were 
sticking to them; or the jars, covers, and rubber 
rings were not cleaned well enough; or else she 
delayed so long in canning, after taking the 



SLEEPING 141 

kettle from the stove, that fresh germs fell from 
the air into the vegetables. 

You may be perfectly certain of one thing, her 
tomatoes went bad because some living germs 
were enclosed in every jar. 

They know these facts very well in factories 
in which lobsters, salmon, and different kinds of 
fruits, vegetables, and soups are canned. In 
these places, however, the canning is more easily 
done than in our kitchens. Because, after the 
meats or vegetables have been put into the tins 
and the covers put on, a small hole is left in one 
end of the can, and then the cans are all well 
boiled, usually in steam. 

The boiling not merely cooks what is in the 
tin but kills all microbes that may be either 
inside or outside of the tin. Then the moment 
it is withdrawn from the steam, the small 
opening in the end is covered with solder. The 
contents are then as safe as were those in 

rteur's sealed flasks. 

From all this you will see that microbes spoil 
our food whenever they get a chance. They 
settle upon milk and turn it sour, and upon raw 
meat and make it decay. They attack ripe fruit 



142 



HYGIENE FOE YOUNG PEOPLE 



and cause it to rot, and get into butter and 
make it rancid. 

Our only remedy against them is to kill them 
and to keep our food perfectly clean. They 
grow quickly in warm weather and in warm 
places, but grow slowly, or not at all, in cold 
places. In summer we should place our milk, 
meats, and fruits in a perfectly clean ice-box. In 
winter, there is no trouble in keeping our foods 
from spoiling, because they can be kept very 
cool or even frozen. Frozen microbes which 
lie on frozen food are dormant and cause no 
decay, but they resume their activity as soon 
as they become warm. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Pasteur proved that microbes were likely to be in the air of 
all ordinary dwellings. Will they be upon our hands and our 
clothing also? 

2. Name five different things, any one of which might give, in 
the process of canning, microbes to the canned vegetables or fruits. 

3. Write out such clear directions for canning fruits or vege- 
tables, that if the directions are followed, no germs are likely to 
get into the cans or jars. 






SLEEPING 143 

CHAPTER XXI 

SLEEPING 

Before giving you some simple rules which 
you should observe about sleeping, I should like 
to remind you of what has already been said 
about the ventilation of your bedroom. It 
would be better for us all if we had no such 
rooms in our houses as bedrooms. 

4k How could we do without bedrooms?" you 
ask. Very easily. Consumptives who take the 
open air treatment for this disease manage to 
get along very well without bedrooms. Not 
only do they get along without bedrooms, but 
many of them recover their health, partly be- 
cause they give up sleeping in bedrooms. And 
surely, if sleeping in the open air helps to cure 
consumption, it ought to be good for people 
who are not ill with any disease. 

In California, for instance, there are many 
large houses some of which have eighteen bed- 
rooms. It would perhaps be more correct to say 
thai there are eighteen dressing rooms; because, 
the bedrooms are all on verandas. The dressing 
and undressing is done in a small inner room, no 



144 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

larger than the stateroom on a small steamer. 
The beds remain on the veranda all summer, in 
fact each bedroom is a part of the veranda cur- 
tained off. The beds themselves can be with- 
drawn from the veranda to the dressing-room 
through a French window; that is, one which 
opens like a door down to the level of the floor. 

In winter the bed is kept in the dressing- 
room all day. At bed-time, after the person 
undresses, the bed with its occupant is rolled 
out from the dressing-room on to the veranda. 
It remains there all night in the very coldest 
weather, and in the morning it is rolled back 
again into the dressing-room. The occupant 
then gets up and dresses in a warm room. 

Hudson Bay trappers often journey for hun- 
dreds of miles in winter, and sleep soundly out 
in the snow, wrapped up in their warm fur robes. 

We do not need to sleep in the snow, but 
there are many reasons why we should sleep on 
verandas. It insures that we shall breathe 
pure air, if the atmosphere in the locality is 
pure. This will help to make us sleep soundly, 
and we shall wake up in the morning feeling 
rested, and fit for our work during the day. 



SLEEPING 145 

The verandas in this house are partitioned 
off, so that each person has a share of the 
veranda to himself. But in some houses that 
are used for the treatment of consumptives, 
there are only two divisions to the veranda, 
one for female, and one for male patients. Or, 
there may be separate verandas at opposite 
ends of the house. 

If you sleep on a veranda in winter, not only 
should you have plenty of bed-clothing on the 
bed, but you should wear a cap so that you 
may not catch a cold in the head. 

Do you notice anything striking about the 
windows in this house? You say they are large, 
and that there are many of them. What will be 
the advantage of so many windows? You say 
they will let in sunshine as well as fresh air, and 
you are quite right. 

All our houses should be well-lighted, well- 
ventilated, and have veranda bedrooms, but I 
am afraid such houses will not come into general 
until people have learned to obey the laws 
of health much better than they do at present. 

How long should we sleep? That will depend 
upon a number of things — upon one's age, upon 



146 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

one's health and strength, upon one's habits, 
and upon the amount and kind of work which 
one has to do each day. 

In the case of children, those of four or five 
years of age should sleep about fourteen hours; 
those of six or seven, about thirteen hours; 
those of eight or nine, about twelve hours; those 
of ten and eleven, about eleven hours; while 
those of twelve and thirteen, should sleep about 
ten and a half hours. 

Most healthy adults need at least eight hours 
sleep; but feeble people, delicate people and 
people who have been ill for a long time, require 
much more than eight hours sleep. 

Then again, bedrooms should not be kept 
warm in winter. If, however, your bedroom 
has a stove or heat coils in it, you should place 
the bed so that the head may be as far as pos- 
sible from the heat. In this way the sleeper's 
feet will be warm and his head cool. 

It is a good rule never to go to bed with cold 
feet. If you do, you will not be able to go to 
sleep until the feet become warm, unless you 
are very tired. 

Then as to the bed itself, there should, if 



SLEEPING 



147 




Figure 34. — Boy in bed. Correct position in which to sleep. 

possible, be a separate one for each person. 
For one reason, people sleep better singly. In 
a single bed you can curl up comfortably. In 
any bed in which two persons sleep, especially, 
if it is a narrow one, you must usually lie 
straight, and, as a rule, you do not sleep so 
well in the straight position as in the curved. 
Besides, if your bed-fellow happens to be rest- 
less, tossing and turning from side to side, you 
cannot sleep well. 

The mattress should be smooth, moderately 
hard, well-aired daily, and well-sunned at least 
once a week. The pillow should be just high 
enough to keep the head level when a person is 
lying on his side. In this position the heart lias 



148 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

no extra work to do, and therefore gets rested. 
A high pillow is objectionable, because the 
higher the pillow, the harder the heart has to 
work in order to pump the blood to the head. 

Bed-clothes should be warm but not too 
heavy. Sometimes children are restless and 
kick off the bed-clothes. This is usually be- 
cause they are not well or because they are too 
warm. When thus uncovered, they may catch 
cold. To avoid this, it is a good plan to make 
them wear pajamas in place of the old-fashioned 
night-gown. 

Avoid if possible sleeping on the back. Try 
to form the habit of sleeping on one side; the 
right, is the better. Have regular hours for 
going to bed and for rising. In fact, you can- 
not begin too soon to live a regular life in all 
things. By this I mean that you should make 
out a kind of time-table for each day and follow 
it as closely as your school time-table is followed 
by the teacher. 

QUESTIONS 

1. How many windows are there in your bedroom? If only one, 
does it allow sufficient sunshine and fresh air to enter? Do you 
place the bed-clothes at the open windows to get the air during 






EXERCISE 149 

some part of the day? What will be one of the effects of sunning 
them? 

2. Where should the bed be placed so that you may not lie in a 

draught? If the door is kept shut, do you arrange two openings in 
the windows, one through which the stuffy air may pass out, and 
one through which the fresh air may come in? 

3. Has your house a veranda on which you can sleep, at least 
during the summer? Would a tent, with the flaps raised from the 
ground, he as good a place in which to get fresh air as a veranda? 

4. How many hours should children sleep? How many should 
adults sleep? Explain how single beds are better than double 
ones? How high should a pillow be? 



CHAPTER XXII 

EXERCISE 

Can you recall to mind the changes that took 
place in the beat of your heart and in your 
breathing, as you ran that quarter mile race 
a short time ago? You remember your heart 
began to beat fast and you could feel it pound- 
ing away in your breast so heavily that you 
thought it might break. Your breathing, too, 
became quicker and quicker, until toward the 
end of your race you were gasping for breath. 
And when you had reached the end, you were 
only too glad to lie down and rest. 

But while you did not often engage in a 



150 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

quarter mile race, you were always ready for a 
game of hare and hounds and would sometimes 
in autumn join in a cross-country run of a mile 
for the pure love of exercise. You came back 
feeling a little tired, of course, but feeling also 
that you were the better of your run and the 
excitement of getting back without being caught. 

What further effects had the long run upon 
you besides quickening the heart beat and the 
breathing? You say that you became very 
warm and that the perspiration was pouring 
down your hot, flushed face. You were very 
thirsty, also, and you drank two or three glasses 
of water before your thirst was quenched. 

Later on, after you had bathed and rested a 
little, you felt hungry and ate a very hearty 
meal. You had been in school all morning and 
afternoon and felt that some fresh air and the 
excitement of being chased, were just what you 
needed. And you were quite right. 

Sitting in school all day had tired you very 
much. You did not know that the blood in 
your muscles and in the inside of your body was 
running very slowly. It was stagnating, I 
might say. You were not suffering any pain, 



EXERCISE 151 

but you were feeling uneasy and fidgety and 
had an intense longing to get out into the fresh 
air and sunshine. 

And you girls were just as fidgety as the boys. 
You did not care to take a cross-country run, 
but you did want to get outside, just as much 
as the boys; and you had visions of a brisk walk 
home or of a game of tennis or, a romp with the 
collie dog, who knew how to play tag almost as 
well as you did. 

What effect do you suppose this exercise — 
whether in sports, in games, or in work — for 
some of you have your share of household work 
to do — had upon your health? Did the quick- 
ened heart -beat and respiration, or the hot and 
ruddy face, covered with perspiration, do you 
good or harm? Let us try to find out, but, first, 
you must know that the blood usually moves 
along the larger arteries at the rate of about 
ten inches per second. 

Xow the quicker heart-beat would produce 
one very important effect. It would send the 
blood round and round through your body, just 
bo much faster than it would if you were sitting 
still or Lying down. 



152 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

The heart is just a pump. If you wish to 
bring water very fast from a well, you work the 
handle of the pump very fast and you get a 
larger stream of water. And in the same way, 
the faster the heart beats, the more quickly 
the blood is pumped all over the body. Will 
this be good or bad for you? Let us see. 

You remember the two kinds of work which 
the blood is doing all the time. It sucks nour- 
ishment from the food and carries this nourish- 
ment to the muscles, and to the nerves, and 
every part of the body. You remember also 
that the blood gathers up the dead waste from 
every nook and corner, and carries it to the 
skin, lungs, kidneys, and bowels where it is 
thrust out of the body. 

This being the great work of the blood, it is 
easily seen that the oftener the blood circles 
round and round, the more likely the body is 
to be well nourished by the food, and the more 
likely the waste is to be all gathered up and 
passed out of the body. 

The blood is like a staff of servants in a big 
house. The faster the servants work and the 
more thoroughly they do their work, the better 



EXERCISE 153 

and cleaner the house is kept. So, the more 
rapidly the heart beats and the quicker the 
breathing, the faster the blood goes and the 
better for you; that is, supposing you have 
healthy hearts and healthy lungs, which all of 
you young people should have. 

Then again, when you get hot from taking 
much exercise of any kind, the nerves make the 
blood leave your innermost parts, so that more 
of it goes to the skin all over the body. This is 
why your face grows red. And then the blood 
in the skin stirs up the sweat glands and makes 
them produce more sweat. Thus, still more of 
the dead waste of the body is carried out 
through the skin, in addition to the extra 
amount that is passing from the lungs. 

So you see that exercise is a good thing. It 
strengthens the heart, and it strengthens the 
muscles of breathing and all other muscles that 
come into play in the exercise. It quickens the 
blood flow, and by so doing, it carries more 
nourishment into, and dead waste out of, every 
nook and corner of the body. 

If the exercise be not too violent, il can do 
you no harm, and as I have tried to show you, 



154 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



it does much good. But sometimes young men 
hurt themselves by overstraining their muscles 
and nerves. This they do not do in taking their 
regular exercise. They do it in taking part in 
athletic contests, in which they wish to come 
out the victors at all costs. 

And sometimes the contests are so keen that 
young men suffer from their effects for the rest 
of their lives. They get disease of the heart or 
blood vessels or other parts of the body, and are 
never so strong again. All this is, of course, 
very wrong. Contests in rowing, hockey, foot- 
ball, running, lifting weights, and such like, 
are all very well when kept within proper 
bounds; but, like many other good things, they 
may become a source of great injury. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What change takes place in the heart-beat and in breathing 
when you run fast, or take any violent exercise? When you sit 
quietly, as in school, what change takes place in heart-beat and 
breathing? What effect will the quietness have upon the flow of 
blood through the body? What further effect will this have upon 
the nourishment of the body and the removal of waste? 

2. What organs, or parts of the body, pass out the waste from 
the blood? Where does the blood get this waste? What proof 
have you seen, during exercise, that more waste is removed from 
the body than during rest, or sleep? 

3. What danger is there in overstrain during athletic contests? 



AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE 155 

What games or sports have you Been at which there has been over- 
strain? What bad result might come to a boy from lifting a weight 
that was too heavy for his strength? 



CHAPTER XXIII 

AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE 

Louis Pasteur's name will always be remem- 
bered in connection with diseases like cholera 
and consumption, which spread from person to 
person. 

His study of germs in air helped him im- 
mensely in a task which he undertook later in 
life and which was in reality nothing less than 
the discovery of how disease is spread from one 
animal to another. 

A disease of the silkworm, called pebrine, was 
ruining the silk growers in France. It had 
spread all over Kurope, and thence to China. 
In 1864 Japan was the only country it had not 
reached. 

At the earnest request of the French Govern- 
ment, Pasteur undertook to study the disease, 
and started in June, 1865, for the south of 
France where the disease was worst. At this 



156 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

time he had never even seen a silkworm. On 
arriving there, he was greatly grieved to see 
the want and suffering which had befallen the 
peasants, as a result of the wholesale destruc- 
tion of the silkworms. 

Whence came the disease? No one knew. 
But one of the signs was that the animal be- 
came covered with little brown or black spots. 
The nursery owners spoke of it as a plague or 
cholera. 

You probably all know that the silkworm is 
not a worm at all. It is an insect, and like 
some insects which you are familiar with, it 
passes through four different stages during its 
lifetime. First, there is the egg stage. From 
the egg, there hatches out a grub or caterpillar, 
which is its second stage. The caterpillar eats 
the leaves of the mulberry, casts off its skin sev- 
eral times, and then passes into the third stage, 
known as the chrysalis. This is the stage in 
which the animal lies dormant, being rolled up 
in a covering of silk, called the cocoon. After 
remaining quiet in the cocoon for some time, 
it works its way out and enters upon its fourth 
stage, — that of the moth. As soon as it has 



AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE 



157 



laid its eggs, the moth dies, and the eggs in the 
following spring hatch out into a new batch of 
grubs or caterpillars. 

We do not grow the Chinese silkmoths in 
this country, as 
the French do in 
France ; but many 
of you must have 
seen the large 

a • 'ji Figure 35. — Grub of American Silkworm Moth, 

^UieriCan SlIK- often found upon our oak trees. 




moth. 



The grub stage, the cocoon, the pupa, 
taken from the inside 
of a cocoon, and the 
— male moth are all 
shown in the accom- 




Fl'iTRE 3G.- 



io of the American 
Silkworm. 



panying figures. 



If you have not seen the big green grub of 
the American silkmoth, 
you must surely have 
seen the grub of the po- 
tato beetle. These eat 
the leaves of the potato, 
just as silkworms cat the leaves of the mulberry. 
Some of you also must have noticed the grub of 
the codling moth, as it was eating its way into 




FlOTTBl 37. — Pupa from inside of 

the cocoon of the American Silk- 
worm. 



158 



HYGIENE FOE YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 38. — Male Moth of American Silkworm. 

an apple ; and some of you have seen the grubs 
on currant bushes. All these insects go through 
much the same stages as the silkworm. 

By hundreds of experiments, which cost him 
an immense amount of very hard work, Pasteur 
discovered that the disease was caused by very 
tiny microbes which grew chiefly in the bodies of 
the silkworm and formed the brown spots. He 
found these microbes in the eggs, in the worms, 
in the pupa, and in the parent moths. Some- 
times he could find them in one stage only. 
This puzzled him very much, but he worked on. 

After a careful examination of hundreds of 
the animals with his microscope, Pasteur ob- 
served that the intestines of the diseased an- 
imals were all crammed full of microbes, and of 



AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE 159 

course the waste from their bodies was also. 
If any of this waste passed from the leaves into 
the intestine of a healthy worm, as might happen 
in feeding, then this worm also at once took the 
disease. Not only did its intestine become 
diseased, but its whole body. 

Another way in which the disease was spread 
was by one silkworm scratching another with its 
sharp pointed claws. If a healthy worm, in 
crawling over mulberry leaves, happened to 
touch the waste from the body of a diseased 
worm and then afterwards scratched a healthy 
worm, this worm caught the disease. The 
microbes entered the body of the healthy worm 
through the wound or scratch, and set up the 
disease. 

Still another way in which the disease was 
spread was by the wind. When the waste from 
the body, or, when the dead bodies of diseased 
worms had dried up and formed dust, the disease 
germs in this dust did not die. On the contrary, 
they were often whirled away in the wind and 

tied down on the leaves of the mulberry. 
This dust when eaten with the leaves, soon gave 
the disease to healthv worms. And so the 



160 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

trouble had spread until, in one province alone 
in France, the silkworm industry had fallen off 
in value to the extent of $1,500,000 per annum. 
Microbes which live upon animals, as these 
microbes did upon the silkworm, are often 
spoken of as parasites. 

QUESTIONS 

1. How did Pasteur's studies of germs in the air help him in 
his study of the silkworm disease? 

2. What marks on the silkworms showed that they were suffering 
from the disease? In what stages of the animal's life did the disease 
show itself? 

3. In what three different ways did the disease spread? What 
was the cause of the disease? 

4. Where were the microbes most numerous in the bodies of the 
silkworms? 



CHAPTER XXIV 

MICROBES AND DISEASE 

Having discovered the cause of the silkworm 
disease and how it was spread, Pasteur's next 
care was to find a remedy. This proved a simple 
matter compared with his previous labors. In 
order to stay the progress of the disease, he saw 
clearly that there must be no disease germs in 
the moths which laid the eggs. 



MICROBES AND DISEASE 161 

But how was he to find out if there were? 
Pasteur depended upon his microscope. At the 
moment when the moths leave their cocoons and 
mate, the silk growers were directed to separate 
them. They were to place each female on a 
little square of linen. On this, it would lay its 
eggs. The moth was then to be pinned up on 
one corner of this piece of linen. When it had 
died and dried up, the dead body was to be 
reduced to powder with a little water, and then 
some of this paste was to be examined under a 
microscope. If the least trace of disease germs 
was found, the piece of linen together with the 
eggs was to be burnt. 

Those peasants w r ho were unable to use a 
microscope were told to preserve a good many 
of the moths in alcohol after the females had 
laid their eggs. The Government undertook to 
have skilled men examine these dead moths 
afterwards and tell the peasants whether the 
cg£s which had been laid were likely to be 
healthy or not . 

Pasteur's plan worked perfectly, and he was 
overjoyed at the prospect of being able to save 
the silk industry of his country. But, perhaps, 



162 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

his crowning joy in all this work was that it 
opened up the prospect of being able to stop 
similar diseases among other animals, and 
especially among human beings. 

After his work on the silkworm was finished, 
he proved that a number of diseases from which 
human beings suffer are caused by parasitic 
plants, or bacteria, getting into the intestine 
with the food or passing into the body with the 
air, or perhaps, through a cut or scratch. In 
short, he discovered that some diseases spread 
among human beings in much the same way as 
pebrine did among silkworms. 

If you will review what you have been told 
about the spread of the silkworm disease, you 
will see that it took place in one or more of 
three ways, namely, (1) by the germs getting 
into food, or (2) by their being carried in the 
air, or (3) by their getting into the body through 
scratches or wounds. 

Now these are almost precisely the three ways 
in which disease germs enter the human body. 

Again, if you consider the way in which 
Pasteur advised the silk growers to fight the 
disease, you will see that his plan was to separate 



MICROBES AND DISEASE 163 

the healthy from the unhealthy. And this is 
precisely one of the ways in which to-day we 
seek to stop the spread of communicable dis- 
eases, like scarlet-fever, diphtheria, and small- 
pox. We isolate the sick ones, that is we keep 
them separate from healthy people. 

And now you will probably wish to know the 
names of some of these diseases. I shall, there- 
fore, make a list of a few r of the most common 
ones : — 

Typhoid fever. Pneumonia. 

Consumption. Influenza. 

Diphtheria. Cholera. 

And very probably the following, though it 
cannot be said that in every case, the special 
bacterium of each disease has been separated 
and recognized ; 

Common cold (Catarrh). Measles. 
Chicken-pox. Mumps. 

Dysentery. Whooping Cough. 

Scarlet-fever and Small-pox are caused, not 
by parasitic plants, but by equally small para- 
sitic animals trotting into the body. 

Bacteria grow with enormous rapidity. Many 



164 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

of these plants are so tiny that about 20,000 of 
them can be laid side by side within the length 
of an inch. When supplied with plenty of 
food, one of these tiny plants may increase to 
15,000,000 in a day. 

Do not imagine, as some people do, that the 
bacteria which cause disease fly or crawl about 
on everything. They do nothing of the kind. 
They usually spread by one diseased animal, 
or human being giving the plants, or germs, to 
another. 

In the very act of growing in the body, these 
bacteria produce a poison which causes pain, 
fever, head-ache, loss of appetite and loss of 
flesh. Each disease is caused by a different 
microbe. Some microbes are present in the air; 
some, in water, milk, food ; while some lie on the 
earth's surface, especially where there is filth. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Unhealthy moths produced unhealthy eggs and unhealthy 
young. Do you think this law might be true for other animals also? 

2. How did Pasteur separate healthy moths from diseased ones? 
Name one or two diseases, in which part of the treatment is to 
shut people up in a room by themselves, or in a hospital with others 
who are suffering from the same disease. 

3. Name as many diseases as you can which are caused by mi- 
crobes? How are these diseases spread? 



CONSUMPTION 165 

4. If you are suffering from a common cold, what would you do 
to prevent it from spreading to other menbers of the family? What 
does u catching a cold " mean? 



CHAPTER XXV 

CONSUMPTION 

As consumption causes more deaths than any 
other disease in America, it will be well for you 
young people to study this disease and try to 
understand how it spreads from one member of 
a family to another. 

While a continued cough, along with pale- 
ness and loss of weight, are often signs of the 
disease, it does not follow that these are always 
the signs of it. The only certain sign is the 
germs in the sputum; that is, in the stuff which 
is coughed up from the lungs. These may be 
found by any well qualified physician. 

And now let me give you an illustration of 
how this fell disease has often spread from 
person to person in a large family. 

Over forty years ago there lived in Renfrew 
County, a farmer who had a family of eight 
healthy children, The mother was a large and 



166 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

very strong woman. The father was somewhat 
undersized, but, nevertheless, a man of fair 
average health. 

But a time came when he caught a severe 
cold ; in fact, he seemed to suffer from a number 
of colds. Scarcely had he got well from one, 
when he caught another. He coughed a great 
deal and spat upon the floor, without ever once 
thinking that there was any harm in doing so. 
Then he slowly grew pale and weak, and as he 
was unable to work his farm, his wife insisted 
upon his seeing a doctor. 

The doctor gave him medicine for months, 
but it seemed to do him no good. He grew 
worse and worse, and, in the course of a year or 
two, he died. 

At the time of the farmer's death, his eldest 
son was about 25 years of age. Strange to say, 
at least it seemed very strange in those days, 
this son caught cold in much the same way as 
his father did, and before three years had gone 
by, he too had coughed his life out. 

And in the course of a number of years, every 
child but one in that large family sickened and 
died in almost exactly the same way. The 



CONSUMPTION 167 

mother nursed every one of them. Her love 
and care was unceasing, but it was all of no 
avail against this terrible disease. 

A similar story could be told of thousands 
and thousands of homes not merely in Canada, 
but all over America and Europe; and a similar 
story will be repeated and repeated in the 
future until you young people preach and 
practice proper methods of stopping the spread 
of this disease. 

Forty years ago the common opinion about 
the disease was that it was passed on from 
parent to child. It was believed that, if one 
parent died of consumption, one or more of the 
children were likely to inherit the disease. 

We do not believe this nowadays. We know 
that a child may inherit delicate lungs or a 
delicate heart or delicate nerves from a parent; 
but we do not believe that any child ever in- 
herits consumption. 

How consumption spreads from one member 
of a family to another is now easily understood. 
The disease is caused by a plant so small that 
it can be scon only with a very powerful magni- 
fying g The plant is usually found in the 



168 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

lungs, but, as a matter of fact, it may start to 
grow in any other part of the body except the 
teeth. 

In its growth in the lungs, it slowly kills 
small portions of these organs. These are 
coughed up daily for months and months, until 
at last there is not enough of the lungs left to 
keep the sufferer alive. When those who have 
consumption are not careful to destroy the 
sputum with its thousands of tiny plants but 
deposit it on the floor where it dries up, the 
dried sputum may be the means of spreading 
the germs of the disease all over the house. 

For you can easily see that the dried sputum 
will be walked upon and broken into dust. 
When the floor is swept, this dust, crammed 
full of the tiny plants which cause the disease, 
is scattered through the air, gets upon the food, 
and is breathed by every member of the family. 
No wonder, then, that once consumption enters 
a house, it often carries off more than one 
member of the family. 

But consumption spreads in other ways than 
from sputum. One who has the disease may 
give it to another by contact, as in kissing. A 



CONSUMPTION 169 

consumptive mother may in this way give it to 
a child. Then, too, the germs may be passed 
from one person to another through using the 
same drinking cups, forks, spoons, and towels, 
especially if these articles are not carefully 
washed. Moisture from the breath in coughing 
or even speaking, may convey the germs to 
others. 

There is still some dispute as to the part 
which meat plays in carrying the germs of con- 
sumption. AYe know that cows suffer from a 
form of consumption which is much like that 
which afflicts human beings; and we know that 
milk from tuberculous cows w r ill give consump- 
tion to human beings; but whether the meat 
from such cattle will give the disease to human 
beings is still open to doubt. 

Xo careful person, however, will use either of 
these kinds of food if they are known to come 
from a diseased animal. 

The question is sometimes asked: — "Can a 
consumptive patient remain at home without 
giving the disease to others?" The answer is 
"Yes, if propel' care is taken." 

If the sick one is very cleanly in every way; 



170 HYGIENE FOE YOUNG PEOPLE 

if he washes his hands and mouth often; if he 
always coughs into a handkerchief; if he always 
deposits his sputum in a paper handkerchief 
or paper spittoon, so that it can be afterwards 
burned; if the remnants of his food are de- 
stroyed; if the clothing, table linen, dishes, bed 
linen, and towels are all carefully disinfected 
by chemicals or in boiling water; then a con- 
sumptive person may live for months with 
others in the same house without great danger 
of giving them the disease. 

If there is any person in the world who 
should learn the laws of health, it is one who is 
in the early stages of consumption. Because, 
the only hope of curing this disease is in obeying 
these laws. Medicines alone will not effect a 
cure. But sunshine, fresh cool air — night and 
day — much rest, and plenty of easily digested 
food will, if the disease has not gone too far, 
cure it in the course of a few months or years. 

But do not imagine that a consumptive per- 
son can carry on such treatment all by himself. 
The fact is that in the case of diseases like con- 
sumption, which last a long time, the best re- 
sults can be secured only when the treatment 



ALCOHOL AND ANIMALS 171. 

is carried on under the eyes of a skilful physi- 
cian. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Do children inherit consumption from parents? If not, ex- 
plain how parents may give consumption to children. 

2. How do the germs of consumption cause the disease? What 
should be done with the sputum of consumptives? 

3. Specify the different ways in which this disease may be spread. 
Explain what precautions should be taken in order that a con- 
sumptive person may not give the disease to others in the same 
hou - 

4. What are some of the signs of this disease in the lungs? What 
is the only certain sign? How may the disease be cured? 

5. What other parts of the body may consumption attack besides 
the lungs? Turn up in your dictionary the meaning of " King's 
evil," and of "scrofula." 



CHAPTER XXVI 

ALCOHOL AND ANIMALS 

How have doctors found out the proper doses 
in which to give medicines to men, women, or 
children? 

In the case of medicines that are not poison- 
ous, there would not be much difficulty; be- 
cause, more or less could be given without much 
danger of doing any great harm. But, in the 

se of poisons, like strychnine and arsenic, 



172 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 






which are often given as medicines, you must 
sometimes have wondered how the proper dose 
had been determined. 

How the proper dose was discovered will 
probably never be known. In the case of new 
medicines, however (and new ones are being 
discovered almost every year), how are the safe 
doses known? In a very simple way. The 
medicines are first given to animals like guinea 
pigs, rabbits, dogs. If they die from large 
doses, then smaller doses are tried. In this way 
the right dose is soon discovered, and the pre- 
cise effect which the medicine produces is also 
noted. 

From the effects which medicines produce 
upon animals, doctors know pretty well what 
the effects will be upon human beings. This was 
the way in which Dr. Hodge, of Clark Univer- 
sity, Worcester, Mass., sought to find out the 
effects of alcohol. For many, many years, there 
had been bitter disputes between temperance 
workers and moderate drinkers as to whether 
alcohol injures or does not injure, every human 
being who drinks it. So Dr, Hodge was asked 
to study the question. 



ALCOHOL AND ANIMALS 173 

In May, 1905, he took two puppies, three 
months old, and began mixing alcohol with 
their food. These two he named Tipsy and 
Bum. Two other puppies of the same age were 
kept in a kennel alongside of the first two, but 
these got no alcohol with their food. These two 
he named Topsy and Nig. 

During the first six months, the four dogs 
were weighed once a week; but Dr. Hodge was 
unable to say that there was any stunting of 
growth or any increase of fat in the two dogs to 
which the alcohol was given. But he did notice 
two or three other effects that were very strik- 
ing and very important. 

For example, he noticed the very thing that 
some doctors have pointed out in the case of 
those who regularly drink alcohol; namely this, 
that drinkers are more liable to catch certain 
diseases and suffer more from them than ab- 
stainers do. When these dogs were two years 
old, a disease broke out among the dogs in 
Worcester, and these four took it. But, strange 
to Bay, Tipsy and Bum, or shall we say the two 
drinkers, took the disease much more severely 
than Topsy and Nig did. The alcoholic dogs 



174 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

nearly died ; whereas the other two were scarcely 
sick at all. 

But Tipsy and Bum taught us another lesson. 
A little instrument, called a pedometer, was 
tied to the collar of each of the four dogs, for 
the purpose of finding out how far they walked 
or ran about each day. You have probably 
heard that men sometimes carry such instru- 
ments in their pockets for the purpose of know- 
ing how many miles they have walked in play- 
ing golf or in hunting deer. 

Now, Dr. Hodge found out in this way that 
Tipsy and Bum were not nearly so fond of 
running about as the two abstainers. In fact, 
they were always lazy. For every 100 yards that 
Nig went, Bum went only 71 j^ards; and for 
every 100 yards that Topsy went, Tipsy went 
only 57. 

Nor were the two alcoholic dogs able to keep 
up the running as long as the two others. The 
four were trained to run after a ball and bring it 
back to Dr. Hodge, whenever he threw it a 
hundred yards across the college grounds. This 
test lasted for fifty minutes each day, for four- 
teen days. Nig and Topsy brought back 922 



ALCOHOL AND ANIMALS 175 

balls out of 1,400, whereas, Bum and Tipsy 
brought back only 47cS balls. 

In short, these two dogs behaved in exactly 
the same way as drinkers do who work in 
mines, factories, or mills. Employers tell us 
that drinkers lose much more time than non- 
drinkers do, and that they cannot work so hard, 
nor so long. 

Lastly, Bum's improvement in general health 
and in activity, after he became a teetotaler, 
turned out to be as marked as in the case of a 
reformed drunkard. But, it was over a year 
before this change came about. At the end of 
this time, his strength and endurance were 
almost, but not quite equal, to that of Nig's. 

So far as could be seen, there was no decrease 
in the intelligence of the alcoholic dogs. One 
difference, however, they did show. They were 
much more timid in the presence of strangers 
than Topsy and Nig. These would run to meet 
strangers, jumping about and barking with 
apparent pleasure; whereas, Tipsy and Bum 
would slink away in fear. Whistles and bells 
made them howl, but these sounds merely made 
Xig and Topsy prick up their ears in curiosity. 



176 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

QUESTIONS 

1. How is the dose, and the effect of a new medicine discovered? 
What animals are used for these purposes? 

2. For what purpose did Dr. Hodge use Topsy and Nig? Did 
alcohol stunt the growth of Tipsy and Bum? How do we know? 

3. In what three respects did the two alcoholic dogs differ from 
Topsy and Nig at the end of six months? How was their activity 
and staying powers tested? What is a pedometer? 

4. How did alcohol affect the intelligence, and the courage of the 
dogs? What improvement took place in Bum after the giving of 
alcohol was stopped? 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE ALCOHOL HABIT 

Why do people "take to drink "? 

It is not because they like alcohol when they 
first taste it. On the contrary, ales, brandies 
and whiskies are very disagreeable to most 
young people. It is only after repeated trials 
that they learn to like them. If young people, 
therefore, were guided by the sense of taste, 
they w T ould never grow fond of alcohol. 

Why then do they drink it at all? Usually, 
for different reasons. Some, because it is 
fashionable with their companions; some, be- 
cause they like the excitement which the alcohol 
causes; some, because they feel dull or fatigued; 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT 177 

and some, in order to drown care and worry. 
The drunkard, of course, drinks because of the 
intolerable thirst which he has acquired for it 
and which he cannot resist. 

If you will think the matter over carefully, 
you will see that the liquor habit is acquired 
just like any other habit. It must have a begin- 
ning. It is not full-formed at first, any more 
than the habit of industry or the habit of idle- 
ness or the habit of smoking tobacco. It must 
be learned. 

Every thoughtful person, I suppose, when he 
makes up his mind that he will acquire some 
habits and shun others, does so after giving the 
matter careful consideration. Let me ask you 
to do the same thing before you allow yourself 
to drift into the drinking habit. 

I have great faith in reasoning things out with 
young people, because I believe that, if I can get 
them to look at both sides of a question, they 
will generally choose the right. 

Of course, I know that there are a consider- 
able number of silly people who will take their 
own way, no matter what reasons you give 
them for acting otherwise. Unfortunately, 



178 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

these people have been born lacking in right 
reason, just as others have been born lacking 
strong hearts or sound lungs or hard teeth. 

But I hope that there are none such among 
you young people. You, I am sure, wish to be 
masters of yourselves. You do not wish to 
become the slave of any bad habit, and there- 
fore, I appeal to you to consider carefully the 
evils of the liquor habit before you take one 
drop of beer, wine, whiskey, brandy, or other 
intoxicating liquors. 

If you were to ask me to tell you of the bene- 
fits to be derived from the liquor habit, I could 
not do so, for I do not know of any. Alcohol 
is a drug, like ether and chloroform, and like 
these drugs it can put to sleep those who drink 
it. It is not a food; nor is it, in the proper sense 
of the word, a stimulant, like tea or coffee. 

As a drug, it is proper that it should be taken 
only when ordered by a physician. But re- 
member, the opinion of physicians as to the 
use of alcohol in curing disease has undergone 
a tremendous change in the last forty years, 
especially in England. Nothing brings out this 
fact more clearly than a glance at the bills for 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT 



179 



Expenditure ox Alcohol. 



Expenditure on Milk. 



£9000 
£8000 
£7000 
£6000 
£5000 
£4000 
£3000 
L £2000 
XI 000 



1862 



1902 



9000 £ 
8000 £ 
7000 £ 
6000 £ 
5000 £ 
4000 £ 
3000 £ 
2000£ 
1000£ 



1862 



1902 



Figure 39. — Diagram showing the relative cost of milk and alcohol used in 
seven large London Hospitals from 1862 to 1902. 

milk and alcohol in seven of the large hospitals 
in London, for the years from 1862 to 1902. 

Just compare these two items in the diagram 
at the top of this page, and see how the use of 
alcohol has fallen off, and the use of milk has 
increased. These figures tell us, as plainly as 
can be, that medical men are losing faith in the 
use of alcohol for the cure of disease, and are 
coming to trust more and more to good milk. 
Remember, too, that during the last forty years 
the number of patients treated in these hospitals 
has largely increased, and you will understand 
that the amount of alcohol given to each pa- 



180 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

tient now is much less than it was forty years 
ago. 

What then are the objections to the use of 
alcohol even in small quantities? They are 
numerous, but I can in this chapter mention 
only a few. There is, above all, the danger of 
acquiring the habit. Taking a little is usually 
followed by taking a little more. 

In the next place, look at some of its effects 
upon the body. In the mouth it blunts the 
sense of taste. In the stomach it delays the 
digestion of the food. After long usage it 
shrinks the stomach and hardens the liver, and 
weakens the heart, and widens the blood vessels 
of the skin, as anyone can see for himself in the 
flushed face of a drinker. 

But, by all odds, its worst effects fall upon 
the brain and nervous system, and, when these 
suffer, every other part of the body suffers. 
As you know, the brain is the chief seat of the 
mind, and whatever affects the brain must 
affect the mind. 

Some people think that a small quantity of 
alcohol makes their brain work better; that 
there is a better flow of ideas and greater vigor 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT 181 

of thought. But such is not the case. The 
mental excitement is due to the action of alcohol 
upon the arteries which supply blood to the 
brain. These arteries grow larger in diameter 
after a dose of alcohol and thus allow more 
blood to go to the brain. The face and neck 
also, grow red after strong liquor has been 
drunk, thus proving that more blood goes to 
these parts of the body. 

The extra supply of blood which is thus 
allowed to reach the brain causes the mental 
excitement and produces the warm glow which 
is felt all over the body after taking a strong 
dose. 

But this very excitement, this rush of ideas, is 
deceiving. It is, in reality, due to loss of control 
over the mind and usually it does not last over 
fifteen minutes. "What happens then?" you 
ask. You can answer this for yourselves. If 
you have ever watched a man pass under the 
influence of the drug, you must have noticed 
that his brain loses its power of working right, 
and his mind gradually becomes unable to think. 
For this reason, he is more liable to make mis- 
takes; he can neither see nor hear properly; 



182 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

and if he is in charge of a train of cars or a 
steamboat, he is much more likely to allow an 
accident to happen. 

Many railroad, manufacturing, and steamboat 
companies have learned these things to their 
cost and now decline to employ men who drink. 

For example, here is part of an order of the 
Canadian Pacific Railway Company, to its 
employees : — 

"The use of intoxicants by employees is pro- 
hibited. Their habitual use or the unnecessary 
frequenting of places where they are sold, while 
not on duty, is sufficient cause for dismissal." 

You can see then how foolish it is to allow 
yourself to use what will certainly be an injury 
to you in every way. The manly lad is not the 
one who is persuaded to drink with men, but 
the one who knows better and has the good 
sense and the courage to say No, when he is 
urged to drink. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What reasons are often given for taking alcohol? What is 
the only safe rule to follow in regard to its use? How is the alcohol 
habit acquired? 

2. What are the effects of alcohol on different parts of the body? 
On the brain and nervous system? 



CLOTHING 183 

3. What proof is there that alcohol sends more blood to the 
skin? What effect on the mind follows at first from more blood 
going to the brain? What further effects soon follow these again? 

4. How do some railroad and steamboat companies treat drunken 
employees? Why should they treat their men thus? 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

CLOTHING 

The desire to have stylish clothing is so strong 
in young people that most of you are blind to 
certain defects in it which often do very great 
harm. I shall, however, point out one defect 
which, in my opinion, is most serious, and 
which injures the health of many young people: 
I mean that clothing is often too tight. 

In all my life I never yet met a person who 
said that his clothing was too tight. Men never 
admit that they wear hats, collars or vests 
which are too tight. They do admit that at 
times they have been coaxed to buy footwear 
that was a little too tight for comfort, but the 
pains which they had to suffer kept them from 
making that mistake very often. 

But, as regards the head, neck and waist, 
most men and women will claim that they have 




184 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

suffered no pain when wearing hats, collars, and 
waist gear, and that, therefore, this kind of 
clothing was certainly doing them no harm, and 
could not be too tight. They are quite ready to 
assert that they have seen people who seemed 
to be wearing very tight clothes, but they 
themselves never did. 

Perhaps, in a matter of dispute like this, one 
way to see the effect of tight clothing, that is, 
of pressure upon human beings, is to see how 
pressure acts upon trees. But you will say that 
trees are not human beings. No, they are not; 
but if we see pressure acting upon young grow- 
ing plants, and changing their shape, perhaps it 
may help us to understand how pressure slowly 
but surely acts upon young people, and, without 
their knowing it, alters the outer shape of the 
body which we can see, and alters also the shape 
of organs inside the body which we cannot see. 

It is not necessary for you to think of tight 
clothing as causing pain. As a general rule it 
causes no pain. The pressure is so slight, and 
so gradual, and lasts so long — often for months 
and years, — that young people are not aware of 
its effects, It is the slow steady pressure that 



CLOTHING 185 

does the harm. If it were painful, it would soon 
be noticed, and the tight waists or boots would 
soon be laid aside. The effects are all the more 
serious, because they are not generally painful, 
and so the wearer is not aware of the harm that 
is being done to his body. 

Xow let us study the effect of pressure upon 
trees. Select one or two in a field or a clump 
upon an exposed hillside. First walk round the 
clump, and notice the branches. If the trees 
are growing somewhat in the open, so as to 
catch the wind, you will see that the branches 
are nearly all leaning in one direction. The 
uppermost part of the trunks also are leaning 
over in the same direction. 

Long, long ago, the Indians had noticed this 
strange fact about tall trees, and used it as a 
means of making their way in a straight course 
through the forest. The trees in any city park, 
or farm orchard, show the same bending to one 
side. 

How has it come about that the branches and 
trunk are inclined to one side ? A record, care- 
fully kept by a weather authority in an eastern 
city, will enable you to understand this. Out 



186 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

of twenty-eight days in July, 1907, the wind 
blew on fourteen days from the south-west. 
This being the case, it is easy to understand how 
nearly all our trees lean over towards the north- 
east. The steady pressure of the wind is from 
the south-west for about half the time, during 
the summer months. The branches and stems 
being young, soft, and growing during these 
months, are easily made to lean over to one side 
by the pressure of the wind. 

Coming back now to the subject of tight 
clothing, you will easily see that just as wind 
presses upon young, soft, growing trees, and 
alters their shape, so tight clothing, whether 
vests, belts, or waist-bands, will press upon the 
lower parts of the chest and alter its shape. 
The size of the chest is lessened, and the lungs 
and heart are kept from doing their work 
properly. The lungs cannot take in as much 
air as the body needs, and as a result they be- 
come more likely to grow the seeds of consump- 
tion. The heart has not enough room for its 
beating, and when a person with tight chest- 
covering runs or works hard, he soon loses his 
breath. 



CLOTHING 



187 




But these are not the only bad effects of tight 

clothing round the waist. Tight vests, belts, 

or bands press upon the 

stomach and bowels and 

slow down the blood flow. 

Excepting in very strong 

people, this leads to in- 
digestion, to weakness of 

muscle, poor health, and 

sometimes to horrible 

disease inside the body. 
The harm done by tight 

chest or waist garments 

is not so much in the change in the position 

of the ribs, as it is to 
the vital organs which lie 
inside of the chest and 
abdomen. Often these 
become so badly diseased 
from tight clothing as to 
cause life-long suffering. 
If you would like to 
understand how the lungs 
are hampered by tight 

clothing, just look at the following tables. The 



Figure 40. — Bones of the chest. 
Squeezed and altered in shape by 
tight clothing. Lungs much com- 
pressed. 




FlGtJKE 41. — Bones of the chest. 
Natural shape. Lungs large and 
healthy. 



188 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



first column denotes the volume of air which 
these men and women passed out of their lungs, 
after taking a long breath, — the clothing being 
worn in the usual way. The second column is 
a similar record; but, in this case, the clothing 
was loosened so as to allow the chest to expand 
as freely as possible. 





Cubic 
inches 


Cubic 

inches 

clothing 

loosened 




Cubic 
inches 


Cubic 
inches 
clothing 
loosened 


Mr. A 


218 


220 


Miss A. . . 


170 


190 


" B 


220 


225 


" B... 


110 


135 


" C - 


220 


230 


" C. . . 


100 


150 


" D 


220 


225 


" D... 


138 


143 


" E 


225 


235 


" E... 


185 


193 


" F (a foot- 












baller who 












wore loose 












clothing) _ 


278 


280 









You see they were able to take in from 2 
cubic inches to 50 cubic inches more air with 
loose clothing, than when it was worn in the 
usual way; and yet not one man or woman 
among them would admit that his or her cloth- 
ing was too tight. 

Quite apart from the poor circulation, con- 
sider what a loss of oxygen the blood must sus- 
tain every day in the case of boys and girls, and 



CLOTHING 1S9 

men and women who wear tight clothing. The 
loss of oxygen is, of course, not so great as these 
records seem to show, because, the breathing 
was forced. But, all the same, tight clothing 
must interfere with regular breathing, and in 
the end health and strength will suffer. This 
is particularly true in the case of growing chil- 
dren. 

QUESTIONS 

1. From what direction does the wind blow most frequently in 
your State during the Summer? What effect has such prevailing 
wind upon young trees? 

2. How do we know that tight clothing alters the shape of some 
parts of the body? How do tight shoes affect the shape of the feet? 

3. What effect has tight clothing upon the shape of the chest? 
Upon the waist? How will it affect the circulation of the blood 
above, and below the waist? If the blood cannot circulate freely 
through the stomach and intestines, how will the nutrition of the 
body be affected? 






190 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 



CHAPTER XXIX 

CLEANLINESS AND PURE WATER 

Knowing that infectious diseases are spread 
by means of germs, growing either on the body 
or in the body, it will be at once clear to you 
that you should follow certain rules, if you 
wish to stop the spread of these diseases. 

Briefly, you should seek to control disease 
germs by cleanliness of person and clothing, by 
cleanliness of food, milk and water, by cleanli- 
ness of houses and furniture, and of everything 
you touch or handle. 

Day schools, Sunday schools, churches, street 
cars, railway cars, crowded places of every 
kind, are nests from which infectious diseases 
are widely spread. 

He would be a bold man indeed, who would 
venture to tell you young people how your 
homes should be kept clean. No one, however, 
will object if I call attention to your school- 
room, for the purpose of helping you to decide 
whether it is as clean as it should be. 

Your schoolroom is, of course, swept every 



CLEANLINESS 191 

evening and dusted every morning. As to 
scrubbing, that is done in a very few schools 
once a week, in a few more schools once a 
month, and in the vast majority only once in a 
long time. 

Are our schools, then, clean enough to keep 
down the disease germs which are always found 
in dust? The trustees have to pay for the 
cleaning, and no doubt think your school is 
clean. But you young people, who spend six 
hours a day in it, have as much interest in 
knowing that it is clean, as any board of trustees 
can have. 

In order to get some standard of cleanliness, 
let me ask how often a kitchen, or dining-room, 
is cleaned in a clean home, and then consider 
whether a schoolroom should not be kept 
equally clean. It seems to me that a school 
should be kept cleaner, because there are many 
more children in it than in a kitchen, and they 
bring in much more dust and dirt. 

How often is a kitchen swept, dusted and 
washed? In many homes the sweeping and 
dusting are done once a day, and the washing 
once, twice, or oven three times a week. If this 



192 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

is necessary in keeping a kitchen clean, surely 
our schoolrooms should be swept and dusted 
once a day, and washed three or four times a 
week. Some of you may object that this is a 
pretty high standard of cleanliness; but surely 
no standard can be too high, when we wish to 
control the spread of disease, and bring up 
healthy children. 

But you will tell me that some school-houses 
are much harder to keep clean than others. 
That is quite true. Old school-houses in which 
the floors are full of gaping cracks — uneven, 
rough and generally made of pine boards — it is 
almost impossible to keep such floors clean. 
The dust of many feet has filled the cracks full, 
and the broom in sweeping, raises this dust 
again and again into the air. 

One step, therefore, towards getting clean 
schools is to have good floors, walls and ceilings. 
As recommended in the school regulations, 
floors should be made of hardwood boards, so 
closely laid together that, if possible, they will 
not harbor one particle of dust. Such floors are 
easily kept clean with a brush-broom. More- 
over, they are easily washed. But, in dirty old 



CLEANLINESS 193 

schools — some of them almost as dirty as ordi- 
nary stables — one consumptive child may give 
the disease to half-a-dozen. 

The germs of consumption are sown oftener 
in childhood than in middle life. Children are 
more liable to take infectious diseases than 
adults are; and, as they cannot care for them- 
selves, parents and trustees should see to it 
that school-houses are kept very much more 
cleanly than they are at present. 

Cleanliness of person, homes, cellars, drains, 
outbuildings and yards, is important; but the 
question of pure water is much more impor- 
tant. 

Only through plague and much sickness have 
we slowly learned that there is danger in drink- 
ing filthy water. The filthy water may come 
from a well, river or lake ; it may be living water 
or stagnant; it may fall from the clouds or rise 
from the bowels of the earth; but, in all such 
cases the water is dangerous to drink, if it has 
become in any way polluted by filth. 

Let me illustrate this by telling you the story 
of an outbreak of cholera that took place in 
1854, in St. James' Parish, Westminster, Lon- 



194 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

don. Seven hundred people died of the disease, 
and many others left the city in terror of their 
lives. The disease was worst around what was 
known as the Broad Street well. From this a 
large number of families drew their daily water 
supply. At that time London had no water sys- 
tem such as it has now. Wells were the only 
source of supply. 

Within the area supplied by the Broad Street 
well, there were two places in which there was 
little or no cholera. One of these was a brewery 
employing 70 men, among whom there was no 
sickness; the other was an almshouse with 535 
inmates, among whom there were five deaths 
from the disease. 

Dr. John Snow and the Rev. H. Whitehead 
noted these two exceptions, and noted also that 
both these places had wells of their own and 
that the inmates rarely, if ever, took water from 
the Broad Street well. Later on these gentle- 
men discovered that the Broad Street well had 
become polluted by soakage from a privy vault. 
A short time before the outbreak this vault had 
received the discharges from a man who was 
known to have had cholera. The well had thus 



CLEANLINESS 195 

become the means of spreading the disease 
among those who had drunk the water. 

Ever since 1854, the distrust in wells as a 
source of pure water has grown so much, that 
people in cities and towns have given up using 
wells altogether, and have laid miles and miles 
of iron piping under ground so as to bring in 
w r ater from places where it is not likely to be 
polluted by filth. 

Even in remote country places people are 
growing more and more careful about their well 
water. And well they may. Because, in many 
rural districts in the United States, there are 
outbreaks of typhoid fever every autumn. 

This usually means that the germs of this 
fever have passed into wells with the surface 
water, either by leaking in at the top, or by 
soaking through polluted soil. Soakage through 
the soil, however, so as to pollute wells is not 
common, because in the very act of soaking 
through the soil, the water is purified. The 
disease germs in the filth are generally caught 
in the soil and never reach the well. 

But soil does not always keep back disease 
germs in surface water. This is well illustrated 



196 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

in an outbreak of typhoid fever that took place 
in July, 1888, at the Kinsley Iron Works, 
Canton, Mass. No fewer than fifty men fell ill 
with the disease. 

Some twenty of them were what are known 
as walking cases, that is, they were sick at 
their stomach, had headache, pain in the back, 
diarrhoea and slight fever but were able to walk 
about. These all got well after about a week's 
illness. 

About ten or eleven others were more seri- 
ously ill. These were in bed with a high fever. 
The other symptoms were all more severe, but 
even these recovered in about two weeks. 

All the rest of the cases were those of well- 
marked typhoid fever, lasting from four to six 
weeks. One man died. 

The men who were taken ill were nearly all 
employed in the shop marked No. 1 on the plan. 
Of these employed in shops Nos. 2 and 3, only 
one man grew ill. None of the wives or children 
of these men took the disease, and therefore the 
doctor believed that the cause of the fever must 
have been located somewhere in the workshops. 

The chief source of the drinking water used by 



CLEANLINESS 



197 




Figure 42. — Plan of the Kinsley Shops and Grounds. 

the men was a well close to the main shop and 
marked C on the plan. Now and again water 
from taps marked D ; and from the spring 
marked E, were used. 

The facts all pointed to the source of the 
typhoid fever being in the well C. Note the 
position of this well, of the office A, and of the 



198 



HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 




Figure 43. — Relation of the Kinsley Office 
to the well. 



cess-pool B, in relation to each other. In order 
to help you to understand the relation of these 

three places, look 
at the accompany- 
ing drawing. 

While the cess- 
pool of the privy 
closet is distant 
from the well 54 
feet, yet you will 
notice that the former is at a higher level than 
the well. 

The cess-pool is also separated from it by a 
ledge of rock which would seem to prevent any 
soakage from the one to the other. But, on 
making the proper tests it was found that the 
water in the cess-pool did soak through cracks 
in the rock, thence through the soil, and finally 
into the well. Were there any of the germs of 
typhoid in this water? 

In order to answer this question, we must if 
possible learn something of the history of the 
cess-pool. 

Let us remember that typhoid germs can 
come only from typhoid germs, The water in 



CLEANLINESS 199 

any well may be very bad and therefore unfit 
to drink, but it will not cause typhoid unless the 
germs of the disease are present in the filthy 
water. 

From the Kinsley well, no fever could arise 
unless the typhoid germs had been present 
in the cess-pool, and had afterwards passed 
through the cracks of the rock and into the 
well. 

It turned out on inquiry that one of the 
persons employed in the office had had an 
attack of typhoid fever the previous autunm. 
He was at the office and felt ill for several days, 
and finally called in a doctor. His case turned 
out to be a genuine one of typhoid fever and 
lasted about six weeks. 

Here then was the cause of the typhoid out- 
break among the men. The germs had lived 
over the winter; had been carried by the water 
from the cess-pool to the well, and, getting into 
the stomachs of the men in their drinking water, 
gave them the disease. 

This is no solitary case. Thousands of wells 
all over America become polluted with filth 
containing typhoid germs during the early 



200 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

autumn months. People who drink water from 
such wells are soon ill with typhoid. 

Sometimes the germs are communicated to 
milk from the drops of water which remain in 
a milk-can, after it has been washed with water 
from a polluted well. The germs grow very 
rapidly in the milk, and when people drink 
such milk they often take the disease. 

Typhoid fever is much more prevalent in 
country districts than in towns or cities. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Is your school-yard, outbuildings and schoolroom clean ? 
How may ordinary sweeping help to spread disease? How should 
dusting be done? 

2. What is meant by filthy water? In what different ways may 
typhoid germs get into wells? The sewage of one town is often 
passed into a river. How may this affect the inhabitants of an- 
other town situated lower down the stream? 

3. How would you explain the fact that visitors at summer 
resorts sometimes return to their city homes ill with typhoid fever? 



PURE MILK 201 



CHAPTER XXX 

PURE MILK 

Milk can be a perfect food, only when it is 
fresh and clean. When infected with disease 
germs it may become a very dangerous food. 
Of course, those of you who have lived on 
farms know a great deal about cows, about 
the stables in which they are kept during cold 
weather, about pails and milk cans and milk- 
houses. Most of you know a good deal about 
wells and pastures. But it often happens that 
just because you have seen a thing day after 
day for years, you think you know all about it, 
when in reality you have much to learn, and I 
am quite sure there are a good many things 
about milk that you young people do not know. 

Let me test your knowledge. How many 
of you can tell why milk turns sour, sometimes 
in a few hours, in summer? Why does sour 
milk become half-solid, or jelly-like? What 
gives milk the animal taste which it often has 
in winter? What causes milk to have a musty 
smell, even when it is not sour? How can it be 



202 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

kept from souring? How is it that Farmer 
Jones' wife makes better butter than Farmer 
Brown's? Is it because her cows are better, or 
because they are better fed, or are kept in 
cleaner stables? And there are many other 
questions which I might ask you, and which I 
am sure you could not answer. 

Some people tell us that thunder turns milk 
sour. But this cannot be true, because, if thun- 
der turns milk sour in July, thunder ought to 
turn it sour at other times in the year. Thunder 
often occurs early in the spring, or late in the 
autumn, but it never turns milk sour in these 
seasons. Then, again, milk turns sour when 
there has been no thunder at all. Heat may be 
the cause, you say. This is much nearer the 
truth, but heat is not the cause. Heat helps on 
the souring, but the souring itself is caused 
by something in the milk. You are no doubt 
astonished at this. What can possibly be in the 
milk? You have yourself often seen the milk- 
pails well washed with soap and water, rinsed 
afterwards with boiling hot water, and then 
with cold. You tell me that nothing could have 
entered the milk from the milk-pail, 






PURE MILK 203 

But what about the cows themselves, and the 
barnyard, and the stable? Have you ever seen 
barnyards covered with filth and mud a foot 
deep? Have you noticed the ceilings of the 
cow stables hanging with cobwebs, dust and 
chaff? 

Did you ever see filth on the sides, flanks, or 
tail of the cow, especially during the winter 
months? Did she whisk her tail about, when 
she was being milked, and switch some dirt 
into the pail? Moreover, did you notice w r hether 
the milker's clothes were perfectly clean or not? 

Recall to mind what you have learned about 
dirt and bacteria, and you will soon realize that 
if any dirt enters the milk from any source — 
from the milker's hands or clothes, from the 
milk-pail or the stable, from the cow's udder or 
teats, then this dirt, containing as it does many 
kinds of bacteria, will sow bacteria in the milk. 
These bacteria in warm weather grow rapidly 
and soon turn the milk sour, and sour milk is 
bad for everyone who drinks it. It is especially 
bad for babies, and causes illness and death 
among thousands of them every July and 
August . 



204 HYGIENE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

Milk is a splendid soil in which to grow bac- 
teria. The warmer the weather the faster they 
grow, and the more quickly the milk turns sour. 
In mid-winter it sours very slowly. If it freezes 
it will not sour at all, because, the bacteria do 
not grow in the cold. 

From what has just been said, it follows that, 
if we desire to keep milk sweet, we must do two 
things: we must keep it free from dirt of every 
kind, and we must keep it cool. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What is the cause of the souring of milk? Why is milk some- 
times musty, and sometimes slimy or ropy? 

2. How would you explain the fact that one farmer makes good 
butter while another makes bad butter? 

3. Explain how bacteria may get into milk. Write out clear 
directions for obtaining pure milk, supposing that the cows are 
well fed and healthy. 

4. What effect has sour milk on babies in summer weather? 
How can this be avoided? 





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